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Eastern Michigan
$6-million university house project a bad
move during tight budgetary times
July 25, 2004
At a time when state universities have been pulling their belts
painfully tight and pleading with the state to be spared more
drastic cuts in aid, Eastern Michigan University spent $6 million on
a palatial home and fund-raising venue for its president, who is
leaving the school at the end of this month.
No matter how EMU spins this, it looks terrible. A state audit of
the project has shredded the credibility of EMU's leadership to a
point where Philip Incarnati, chairman of the EMU Regents, ought to
resign or at least surrender his leadership post.
The Ypsilanti school, which gets more than a third of its
$250-million annual budget from the state, will be an easy punching
bag for the Legislature in the next round of budgeting for higher
education. Eastern's poor judgment and worse timing on this project
could even have an unfair broad-brush effect on the state's 14 other
autonomous universities.
It would also be unfair for legislators to take this debacle out
of EMU's hide in the appropriations process. Such a move would
inevitably add to the tuition burden of EMU students, who had no
part in the decisions of the Regents. One legislator has called for
the entire board, all holdover appointees of former governor John
Engler, to resign. That's not such a bad idea in this situation, but
with the school's president leaving, a mass Regents' departure would
create a void for too long atop EMU.
The extraordinarily critical 36-page state audit of the
University House project disputed EMU's claim that it was only a
$3.5-million undertaking, putting the cost at $6 million, including
land acquisition, construction of the 10,200-square-foot house and
attendant landscaping. The state audit also chastised the university
for using more than $3 million from its operating funds to pay for
the project during a time when student tuition was increased. The
Ann Arbor News had to file a request under the Freedom of
Information Act to learn that departing President Samuel Kirkpatrick
will receive a farewell package worth about $514,000, including two
years' pay and health care through 2008.
Incarnati, a Regent since 1992 and chairman of the board since
'95, told the Free Press that "if we knew 3 1/2 years ago that the
state was going to be in the shape that it's in, we probably would
not have gone forward with the project, we probably would have
postponed it."
But he also said that cash gifts to EMU have been up 30 percent
to 40 percent since the University House, with its facilities for
entertaining prospective donors, opened last year.
EMU issued strong exceptions to some parts of the state audit,
although Incarnati insisted "we didn't take this lightly."
Incarnati said he would not consider quitting the board "as long
as I think I can provide some benefit to the university."
"But we need to move on," he said, "and do what's important for
the education of our students."
That should have been the Regents' guiding philosophy all along.
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