“Honestly I am but a lowly anthropology professor so I don’t have the authority to receive it,” Turney-High wrote, suggesting that Leaphart be the one to say yes.

“There’s a larger problem involved,” he went on. “So far as I know no one is officially responsible for the receipt, storage or preservation or occasional display, so our collection is not displayed at all or very rarely. I hardly think this is the proper way to treat state property or show our gratitude to benefactors.”

“So we aren’t the first ones, OK?” Dixon said last week.

“We’re carrying a torch,” agreed Tully Thibeau, who chairs the anthropology department.

Thibeau and Dixon acknowledge that what’s happening to the Anthropological Curation Facility is happening all over campus.

“We really don’t want to be whiners,” said Dixon. “We want to be optimistic. But really this needs to be brought to the attention of the public. In the first place, most people have no idea that the university has these collections and what these collections mean in terms of cultural value.”

Thibeau said a research institute like UM depends on its research collections.