UB has become an example of what a public school shouldn't be.
Consider its recent presidential search. Supposedly there were 60-some-odd candidates, yet we only heard of one.
Binghamton University's unsuccessful open search for its next president cost $170 million, but Jeremy Jacobs, the chair of our school's closed search, hasn't said a word about ours, much less its expenses.
Remember that UB is a public university and taxpayer dollars support this search. That would be fine if there were any transparency whatsoever, but the fact that everything has happened behind closed doors has our eyebrows raised.
The search has been very private, indeed – is it a coincidence that many have accused UB of trying to privatize itself through its ambitious 2020 plan?
Probably not – take a look at some of the members of the Presidential Search Committee: the president of M&T Bank, the president of the Anseco Group, two partners at two different law firms, and a clinical assistant professor at the Roswell Park Cancer Institute. Oh, and let's not forget that Jacobs, the owner of the Boston Bruins, is one of Western New York's richest men.
These are the people who have a vested interest in the UB 2020 plan, the plan that will supposedly fix and revitalize the Buffalo economy. They're not exactly your average group of Buffalo community activists.
Do they care about the people in the Fruit Belt who will lose their homes as part of the Downtown Campus expansion, or do they only see the picturesque buildings that may someday take their place?
Provost Satish K. Tripathi, whose fingerprints are all over the 2020 plan, has "unanimously and enthusiastically" been recommended to replace John B. Simpson as UB's next president. Since we haven't been told anything to the contrary during the search, it's plausible to assume that he was going to get this job from the beginning.
Again, we can't be sure, because everything was done privately.
We're not knocking Tripathi's qualifications or ability to lead this university. We only wish that the selection process was transparent, since we are at a public school.
And also remember that we are at a school. It seems that all the 2020 talk at UB has little to do with education, except that it will cost more.
As current students, it's hard not to be discouraged. Working at The Spectrum, we find that UB higher-ups always seem to have something to hide. Whenever we place a call when something important is happening at school, we are told that somebody is out of town, out of office, or unable to comment.
We are graduating in May (hopefully), and this past year has us feeling lost in the shuffle. There's been all this talk about the future, and we've fallen by the wayside. We can only hope to have jobs in 2020, regardless of what is happening here at UB.
If we have it all wrong, we'd love for somebody to set us straight. But that would mean that somebody in the administration would have to return a phone call.
Email: andrew.wiktor@ubspectrum.com
luke.hammill@ubspectrum.com
