Selling Pollock mural would be appalling

Rep. Scott Raecker, chairman of the state's House Appropriations Committee, recently introduced a bill to have the University of Iowa sell its Jackson Pollock holding “Mural” in order to reap utility value for scholarships to be held in a trust fund. I find the idea appalling and sad.

To sell a painting of that magnitude is asking the university to sell its soul, its legacy, its distinction. The UI art school needs a home and if it takes the UI football program to play one extra game to spearhead a worldwide campaign to drive its funding, so be it.

This Republican legislator is shortsighted in seeing the intrinsic stamp of distinction and value this brings to the UI as an institution. Would you ask Egypt to sell its Tut treasures, too, in order to fund U of Cairo?

A public university should be fully funded by the state, period. Gone are the Kennedy-Johnson-Nixon years of low tuition rates and enriched departments. Now a student is overly burdened with debt to the point it becomes a mortgage payment and more to them. This is an absolutely insane way to educate a society through a state university.

Cort Stapleton

Cedar Rapids