One doesn't bury one's revered elders before they have expired. Lacking any courtesy for public input or brainstorming for an obviously significant and major decision, the historic beauty of John Gaw Meem-inspired Southwestern architecture on the Cerrillos Road Santa Fe Indian School campus was quietly demolished.

Having spent roughly 15 years as a staff member working in those magnificently well-built and well-maintained structures (at least they were through 1980), with their beautiful interior woodworking and murals created by such White House-recognized artists as Allan Houser, it sickens me that such remarkably treasured local monuments were so callously rendered into the dust of eternal debris, with little or no effort to save anything.

Even Pueblo alumni of that historic campus — ones I have spoken with, as well as other tribal alumni — are deeply saddened by this very worst of ill-conceived administrative decisions, as evidenced by continuing public feedback.

This Pueblo high-school program moved to the Cerrillos Road campus during the Institute of American Indian Arts' tenure there because their Albuquerque campus of roughly equal age was either too poorly maintained or too poorly constructed to either renovate or save.

With the Pueblos' new federally funded multi-million-dollar campus now up and running (situated behind the demolished buildings), one wonders what questions Congress might ask when this debris-focused school administration comes knocking at the door for new funding needs! Surely those solid, beautiful, historic treasures — symbols of American Western history — could have been preserved with minimal grants from historic-preservation societies, perhaps costing the school little or nothing. Without their obliteration, those empty but pleasing and useful buildings might have been employed to provide business or residential rental incomes to pay for new school needs, thus saving a magnificent portion of New Mexico's past that the entire community might enjoy.

Bob Harcourt taught at the IAIA campus for 30 years beginning in 1965, including when it shared the Cerrillos Road property with the Santa Fe Indian School. He currently volunteers at the new IAIA campus on Santa Fe's south side.