Robert Thorson calls the design of the University of Connecticut's new Fine Arts Building a "metal monstrosity" and agrees with U.S. News and World Report that its architect, Frank Gehry, is "showy, self-indulgent and egotistical," the right choice perhaps for Bilbao or Los Angeles but not Storrs. My colleague feels that Gehry's "cosmic design" would fatally compromise the university's "earthy visual aesthetic." He prefers the "red brick" of the Nafe Katter Theater and the Benton Museum addition to "phallic, fecal, Nazi or crucifix designs" that he free-associates with the Gehry building.

Professor Thorson concedes that he has no artistic or architectural credentials; none are really required when you are the self-appointed guardian of "public sensibility." For him the enemy is not Frank Gehry but "artistic freedom" in general. He doesn't like architecture that is emotionally "arousing" because it militates against society's goal of keeping itself happily glued together. Professor Thorson would take the "bland" over "public arousal" every time.

I suppose this is something of a concession for a teacher who has spent his career working in buildings that aren't really architecture at all. What he describes as "red brick" is essentially cinderblock construction. With the exception of the fine Works Progress Administration-style buildings from the 1930s, the University of Connecticut was built entirely on the cheap.

Typical of Storrs architecture are the twin eyesores of Arjona and Monteith. Set in a prominent location across from Mirror Lake, these two dilapidated buildings are as much the public face of UConn as the Conn Dome or the new chemistry and business administration buildings. Yet, the architecture of the new and old UConn has a lot in common. It aspires to nothing. Let Louis Kahn, Paul Rudolph and Eero Saarinen, among other "egotistical" modernists, build Yale. Cinder-block boxes are good enough for a state institution.

UConn's most recent architecture includes an overscaled chemistry building meant to conjure up happy images of a New England textile mill and a hulking business administration building in a retro German Gothic. These structures added chockablock to the campus' familiar hodgepodge of nondescript crapola can only inspire dread. It is a campus better suited to the South Bronx than to pastoral eastern Connecticut.

President Philip E. Austin and Fine Arts Dean David G. Woods have the audacity to question the complacency of this "good-enough" UConn aesthetic and dare to imagine a campus worthy of a $2.3 billion facelift. The university received a large grant from the National Endowment for the Arts to run an architectural competition to choose a designer for a new School of Fine Arts facility.

Over a hundred architects from all over the world were invited to submit their credentials to the Fine Arts faculty. A small group of award-winning designers was invited to campus to present their work in a public lecture to help the faculty narrow down the list to three finalists. Mack Scogin Merrill Elam Architects, Zaha Hadid and Frank Gehry were asked to prepare plans and models for the building and return to present them publicly. The work was judged by an independent jury that included professional architects, a high-ranking administrator, and a faculty member chosen from outside the School of Fine Arts. I was the lone UConn faculty member on the jury.

Frank Gehry won the commission over strong competition. Among other considerations, the jury took public comments into account. I can assure Dr. Thorson that the jurors were not part of a "Gehry cult." Our decision was based on the technical merits of the design and suitability for the site. Gehry's scheme was chosen in large part because it was more than just a proposal for a single stand-alone building. He and his Connecticut partners (Herbert S. Newman and Partners) took into consideration the entire campus as well as the current plans for Storrs' new "downtown."

Dr. Thorson's position has dominated public discussion for over 60 years. As a result, Storrs is currently a town without an identifiable core and a university without a single example of quality architecture. The university community (town and gown) has finally begun to address this sorry state of affairs. There is more than enough "wooded rural ambience" around here to accommodate even a few idiosyncratic works of man. Philip Johnson's now-beloved "glass house" and Frank Lloyd Wright's Guggenheim Museum, among many acknowledged architectural masterpieces, were first met with derision. A University that aspires to greatness must be open to excellence in every form.