Ever since Lake Land College was founded in 1966, the college has always been known as Lake Land. But have you ever asked yourself why we’re called Lake Land? For starters, it isn’t because the college is on Lake Land Boulevard. As a matter of fact, before the college was founded the road now known as Lake Land Blvd. wasn’t named that until after the college was founded. 

Maybe we’re called Lake Land because of the lakes near by, except Lake Paradise is the closest lake, and it’s around five miles West of Lake Land. In fact, a lot of Lake Land students not from this area don’t even know there is a Lake Paradise nor where it is.

Therefore, Houston, we have a problem. The name Lake Land implies we have at least one lake and have land on our campus, but we only have land and two ponds instead. This leads to only two solutions, we can either change our name to Pond Land College so we’re no longer liars or Lake Land needs to build a human-made lake on campus. 

At The Navigator, we don’t want the college to change its name because then we have to change the street name, which leads to all the businesses on Lake Land Blvd. with Lake Land in their business name because of the street also has to change their name. This leaves the only option to be to create a human-made lake on campus.

For starters, we can’t just expand the existing ponds because Lake Land’s Cross Country Trail wraps around both. Even though Lake Land doesn’t have a Cross Country team, our campus trail is very important for nearby high schools, so we can’t destroy the Cross Country Trail. Therefore, we’ll need to create the lake from scratch and find a place to put it. 

Now, the best place to put a lake would be if Lake Land bought the crop field next to Lake Land circled in the image above. If Lake Land bought this land, we could put the lake where it is outlined in red.

Lake Land would benefit from this lake from more than just making it so our name isn’t a lie. We could create an entire ecosystem in this lake. Plenty of students fish in the ponds, imagine fishing on campus in a lake. Also, the Horticulture Department could benefit from the lake by being able to grow water/lake plants, and those plants would benefit from a healthy ecosystem in the lake. The Biology courses would also benefit from having a lake for labs. 

Additionally, how many community colleges while marketing and recruiting people to enroll can say we have a campus lake? Along with that, we could host all of Laker Louie’s, Lake Land’s mascot, family and friends in our lake, and there will always be a Laker duck representative on campus all-year except for when they have to migrate for the winter.

The 2020-2021 Navigator staff leaves this as our last request from Lake Land College. Build the lake; it would be beautiful, and there will never be another Laker alumni or current student who has to say that they come from a community college built on lies.