The College Fix

OPINION: What will it mean for the University of Dallas if Las Vegas Sands lands their resort casino in its backyard? 

The University of Dallas is a unique liberal arts institution in America’s higher education landscape. A private, Catholic college with two campuses – one in Dallas and one in Rome – it has a superb Great Books core curriculum, as well as rigorous majors from business and financial accounting to studio art and classics.

Founded in 1956, UD is quirky, intellectual, eccentric, idealistic, and almost entirely tuition-driven. Its U.S. campus is nestled in the little hills of the city of Irving, from which the Dallas skyline is visible from the quad.

Enter the Asian-based Las Vegas Sands Casino Corporation. Sands owns The Venetian and The Palazzo on the Las Vegas Strip, and four resort casinos in Macau, Singapore. The third largest casino company in the world, it has an impressive reputation as too-big-to-fail.

Now that corporation has set its sights on a parcel next to the University of Dallas for a multi-billion dollar project for what is projected to be the largest casino and resort in the United States, possibly in the world.

Can it be stopped? Nothing is impossible for God, but it is a case of David versus Goliath.

The casino hopes to develop its largest venture ever in Irving, and that news was recently dropped like a ton of bricks on the Dallas suburb’s residents and workers.

This rushed effort to rezone for gambling is a striking, pre-emptive move because casino gambling is currently illegal under the Texas constitution. Irving residents were not expecting to have to face and decide on this issue until after the Texas legislature takes up the issue. (Sands Corporation openly admits to pouring millions of dollars of lobbying money into changing the Texas state constitution.)

In a recent eight-hour meeting, stretching from 6 p.m. to 2 a.m., hundreds of Irving residents made their voices heard to the Planning Commission. The unanimity was utterly unprecedented.

Only four people rose to voice their enthusiasm for the casino. University of Dallas faculty, alumni, staff, and students joined other Irving residents to make clear that they thought the process rushed, under-handed, and undemocratic. They made the case that casino gambling is not the kind of development that the city needs or wants. Their arguments were backed up with economic studies, public health studies, public safety studies and legitimate concerns about the extensive public record of the history of the Sands Corporation.

All to no avail. In the face of overwhelming public opposition the commission voted in support of casino gambling. The issue is scheduled to go before the Irving City Council today.

At its origin, Irving was a Baptist town. Churches, schools, cotton gins, a blacksmith shop and a general store were the center of town. It was a railway stop and an oasis of civilization in the Texas Wild West.

In the post-WWII oil rush period, Irish, Italian, Czech, German, and Polish Catholics arrived, founding Catholic parishes, the University of Dallas, a Cistercian Abbey, and a Dominican Priory–all still flourishing with plenty of John Paul II-era young vocations.

In the 1970s, DFW Airport became the hub for American Airlines and the Texas Cowboys built Texas Stadium. This new development turned the small, still rural town of Irving into a suburb of Dallas, part of the sprawling Mid-Cities Metroplex.

But in the past 25 years, Irving has seen three stages of a new kind of organic, internal development. First, the 2007 financial crisis made lots of University of Dallas alumni stay in Texas, where economic freedom had brought economic growth. The Californians, Chicagoans, and Bostonians who had chosen to come all the way to Texas for what George Weigel, the biographer of John Paul II called “The finest Catholic University in America,” settled down and stayed.

Secondly, the educational freedom of Texas made possible the incredible growth of Classical Education charter schools like Great Hearts Academies and Founders Classical Academies. So even more University of Dallas alumni stayed for the teaching jobs available and the schools available for their growing families.

Finally, the nationwide COVID lockdowns brought an unprecedented wave of families fleeing California and New York, Minnesota and other Blue States. They came for the churches and the schools that remained open.

After these three waves of internal immigration, Irving is now a destination in its own right—the jobs, the churches, the schools, the families have created an amazingly cohesive, face-to-face, come-as-you-are-and-bring-your-guitar, backyard and front porch republic that is the very face of what conservatives mean when they say “Make America Great Again.”

The Las Vegas Sands Corporation promises to increase visitors to Irving, drawn by their destination resort casino, upscale entertainment and dining opportunities. They want outsiders to come to Irving to play.

But the families of Irving don’t like that kind of play: they prefer to worship God, work to support, raise, and educate their children, and govern themselves. These are the components of the good life as they see it–not destination travel and food tourism.

This vision has united Catholics and Muslims, Baptists and Methodists, Indians and Hispanics, academics and firefighters. The Irving that was on display at the townhall this past week was diverse and inclusive because of a shared vision of a family-friendly community that they themselves have built. As one resident put it, Irving doesn’t need a destination resort because it is already a destination for “Freedom Chasers.”

What will it mean for the University of Dallas if Las Vegas Sands lands their resort casino in its backyard? Will students still want to come from all 50 States in the Union to a little hill in Irving for an education in the Christian tradition and history of Western Civilization? Will they settle down to jobs, families, churches, and schools in the immediate vicinity of a major gambling complex? Las Vegas dismisses out of hand as absurd propaganda all questions about crime, prostitution, vagrancy or other social ills.

The Irving residents of the University of Dallas community disagree and are in this struggle for the long haul.

Susan Hanssen is an associate professor at the University of Dallas an and a resident of Irving, Texas, for the past 25 years. She teaches the history of American civilization on the Dallas campus during the regular school year and history of Western Civilization in Rome during the summers.

IMAGE CAPTION AND CREDIT: An aerial view of the University of Dallas; University of Dallas YouTube page screenshot

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