Kent State Memories...And a Grammar Glitch

Today is the 40th anniversary of the shootings at Kent State University on May 4, 1970, as John Filo's Pulitzer Prize winning photo (copy version at left) reminds us. I had just moved from Ohio to Alabama at that time, and like everyone else, I was stunned that such a thing could happen on a college campus in our country. It was a time of disillusionment with war (Vietnam), and tensions were high on many college campuses. Although I never attended Kent State, it was not far from my home, and many of my high school friends did.

Michael Scott wrote an entry for today in the Metro-cleveland.com online version of The Cleveland Plain Dealer titled "Kent State: Coming of Age After May 4, 1970 shootings." It talked about the development of Ohio's third largest university since that fateful, sad day. It now has 38,000 students--nearly double the number in 1970.

In that article, Scott created a really good example of what happens when a writer does not follow through with parallel structure. In this case, the omission of the simple one-letter word "a" managed to turn a fashion school into a science lab. Here is the sentence:

Kent State is home to the state's largest nursing school and a top 10 U. S. fashion school and museum is generally acclaimed as an international leader in liquid crystal research.

Whoops! There are three separate entities here--the nursing school, the fashion school, and the Liquid Crystal Institute. By putting "school and museum" together without another article (a, an, OR the), Scott managed to make it sound as if the fashion school and museum are leaders in liquid crystal research. I'm not sure what "museum" has to do with it, but there is an internationally recognized Liquid Crystal INSTITUTE at Kent State. I think the sentence should read something like this:

Kent State is home to the state's largest nursing school and a top 10 U. S. fashion school as well as an institute that is an international leader in liquid crystal research.

If each item (nursing school, fashion school, institute) has its own article, the reader does not have trouble understanding what goes with what.