Last Friday, the ISU Foundation announced it had reached its goal of $9 million to restore the dilapidated Morrill Hall to its former beauty.

We would like to say, congratulations.

The hard work of a few and the contributions of many will now open a door that had previously been shut. The building, which had been scheduled for demolition, has escaped the chopping block so many other ISU buildings have suffered and has been reprieved from the wrecking ball. Things are looking up for Morrill Hall.

We are so quick these days to get rid of our history. We are constantly striving for the best and the newest. Our campus has lost a lot in the past few years. Budget cuts and bad economies have touched a part of everyone’s lives. We have lost the old dairy barns and the Towers, two solid icons of our community. True, they have been necessary changes. But that loss represents something larger.

We become part of the buildings we live and work in. Unconsciously, we form invisible bonds with our surroundings, placing pieces of ourselves between the faded bricks. A building is a solid foundation when everything else seems to be in constant motion. It doesn’t move, doesn’t budge and, in the case of Morrill Hall, almost nothing can bring it down.

For more than 100 years, Morrill Hall has remained sturdy for its inhabitants. It has provided the rooms that warmed the cold hands of frozen students, the walls that sheltered the work of Christian Petersen from rain.

It supported the windows that let the first fall breeze blow in to rustle essay papers and housed the bats that would swoop in to startle an unsuspecting professor every now and then.

It took guts to take on this project. Raising $9 million dollars is no easy feat, and it is even harder when the donors won’t have the building named after them. Many thought there was no point in saving a 100-year-old building.

But in less than a year, the ISU Foundation and Iowa State have rightly proved all those naysayers wrong.