SHORTER UNIVERSITY, long out of sight and land-locked atop its island in the sky, is coming down off “The Hill” as this space predicted it must two years ago by purchasing the Darlington Lower School campus adjoining its holdings. This not only helps Darlington, which has long planned to transition its elementary grades to its main campus (eventually in a new building) but will provide Shorter not only greater visibility but room to amble. It will keep jumping to the other side of Shorter Avenue, too.

This is a good move particularly if, as pledged, the historic Thornwood mansion, original home to Col. Alfred Shorter who started the college-now-university, is preserved and put on the National Register of Historic Places, where it has long belonged.

This is more about Shorter’s long-term economic viability than its present short-term educational and ethical values, about nothing more need be said. The creations of man tend to come and then go while, as Will Rogers once advised, “Buy land because God ain’t making any more of that.”