Take time to enjoy beauties of campus

---

Tweet

Good thing I went to Beaumont Tower. Good thing I walked the skinny, turning staircase to the top. Good thing I was sitting in a softly sunlit room in an old folding chair watching Ray McLellan play the carillon to north campus. If I had not done this, I never would have known how the bells at the tower rang their melodies.

As I’ve grown more comfortable with campus and explored its hiding places, I’ve also become more aware of what makes this campus beautiful. During the summer, when I would walk to class, I always passed the fountain surrounded by flowers, benches and trees by the Natural Science Building. On my way back from a class in the fall, I passed the magnificent gardens in the courtyard of the Chemistry Building. For all my time at MSU, I’ve admired the chapel on campus where my parents were married more than 25 years ago. Unfortunately, I noticed too few of my peers observing the surroundings like I did.

Underneath the quick glimpses of Sparty, Spartan Stadium and the rock on Farm Lane, there lay incredible works of art all across campus. Some are harder to find (like the carillonneurs at Beaumont Tower), but some you might pass by every day going to class. I might sound like Pocahontas (yes, “Colors of The Wind” has been stuck in my head all the while I was writing this), but taking some time to admire the small things on campus most likely will make your walk a little warmer and your day a little brighter.

When I first walked into Beaumont Tower, I immediately was met by a woman playing her own personal carillon — a large piano-like instrument used to play the bells of the tower — on the ground level. She asked what year I was. As I explained to her that I was a sophomore, her eyes lit up. I then told her it was my first time coming to the tower — she wasn’t surprised. It seemed that she had heard someone say that every day for 20 years. Apparently the majority of students coming to the tower weren’t new on campus, they were upperclassmen. I quickly learned many students weren’t aware of the man playing the carillon every Tuesday at noon. What’s more is they never knew they could watch him play.

There are about 170 carillons in the United States. Two of them are on our campus, in the same building no less. At the very least, students could take a break from Miley Cyrus, pull out those headphones and listen to the sounds resonating from the top of Beaumont Tower. Now that I’ve taken the time to admire the building I had walked past seemingly hundreds of times, I can appreciate it to be more than a good-looking brick tower. Now that I know what goes on inside the building and its history, I can do more than just walk by. I’ve found the saying, “don’t judge a book by its cover,” can apply to many things, including the buildings I walk by every day.

In the early fall I always would catch a glimpse of the Beal Botanical Garden before walking through the doors of the Plant and Soil Sciences Building. I always noticed the exuberant amount of blooming life coming from the gardens. I, like most people, simply glimpsed at the flowers every day, telling myself I would walk through the garden eventually. For most, “eventually” turns into “never.” For me, it possibly could have.

It’s a good thing I went for a run that one September day. I noticed the gardens again, and, in lieu of my past behavior, decided to stop. I walked through the gardens and was relieved to have seen the beautiful enclosure of life. Simply put, I was more amazed at the first sight of the botanical gardens than I was at my first sighting of Sparty. However, I see more admiration by students of the bronze statue than of the gardens.

I write this as a guide to those who have not been able to explore campus yet, not as a “tsk-tsk” to those who haven’t seen all that campus has to offer. I’m saying everyone should stop and smell the flowers every now and then. Getting the best seat in your business class isn’t as important as walking by the chapel (yes, we have a chapel on campus) or throwing a Frisbee by the Red Cedar River. Take a walk through the gardens; I promise it’s worth it (but wait until spring, I don’t think anything has bloomed there yet). Professor William James Beal, the founder of the gardens, said it best: “Students should themselves become discerning observers and investigators rather than mere reservoirs of previously accumulated knowledge.”

Parker Wilson is a State News intern. Reach him at wilso881@msu.edu.

---