SDSU War Memorial Why it Matters
Today, the SDSU War Memorial stands tall in Aztec Center Green, North of the SDSU Transit Center and West of the Conrad Prebys Aztec Student Union building. Former SDSU student's anthropology master's thesis, Todd Kennedy, observed the lack of interaction passing students had with the free-standing war memorial. Numerous studies explore what Kennedy began to question, how to convert visitors into engaged participants at sites of memory. The location of the monument makes it a perfect memorial for engaging the "accidental tourists." An accidental tourist is a "would-be visitor who had not planned to visit a site of memory but ended up doing so because of the site’s proximity to another existing attraction or daily route. [1]"
War memorials are buildings, monuments, statues, or public items that celebrate victory or commemorate the lives lost in a war.
The SDSU War Memorial uniquely intersects the identities of the names etched in granite. They were both students who chose to enroll at SDSU and service members who died in the line of duty. The link this memorial has with non-military affiliated students is the connection to education. These former students had classes in lecture halls, ate lunch with friends, and struggled for parking. This intersectionality of student and soldier runs deep at SDSU with thousands of veterans and active duty service members enrolled currently. Many other universities erected similar memorials, commemorating former students who served in various wars and conflicts. (Examples include: University of Kansas, Georgetown University, Davidson College, The University of Iowa, and Texas A&M University).
What sets SDSU War Memorial apart from other college war memorials is its granite obelisk. The jagged top of this monolith is distinctly one-of-a-kind.
Work Cited:
[1] Ekaterina V. Haskin and Michael A. Rancourt, "Accidental Tourists: Visiting Ephemeral War Memorials," Memory Studies 10, no. 2 (2017): 164.