Transparent Sophistry
Excellent and balanced article on UT's community relationship policy by Joe Tarr ["Bad Neighbor?" Vol. 9, No. 50]. Too balanced, and far too kind. I'm sure some omissions were in the interest of objectivity, but they need to be mentioned.
First of all, David Dewhirst is donating to UT, free of charge, a very large space in the old Watson's building on Market Square, which he owns. It is being used by the UT College of Architecture's Urban Design Center, and has been a wonderful addition to the downtown, with Professor Mark Schimmenti making full use of the space.
Although this center is in its second academic year there, not once has anyone from UT acknowledged the gift and attempt at partnership with UT, or even said "Thank you" to David Dewhirst! Not the President, not the Chancellor, no one.
I wrote a letter to Wade Gilley, the new President, well over a month ago, requesting that UT remedy this incredible omission, and have not even received the courtesy of a reply. David Dewhirst has yet to hear from anyone. So much for Wade Gilley's concern about university-community partnership, or even common courtesy.
Second, all we hear from UT's administration, including Wade Gilley, is excuses about how short of money they are any time they want to avoid any kind of involvement with Knoxville, avoid being called to account for confiscating and destroying people's homes and other property, or other things that negatively impact the larger community. No creativity on the financial problems at all, just a stubborn, uncaring resistance to the concerns of the community that has supported them so generously for so many decades.
The idiotic four-lane bridge to the Ag Campus is a case in point. They don't have enough money to pay David Dewhirst a modest rent, or write a thank you letter, but they have $10 million to build a bridge virtually no one wants. They have money to confiscate and demolish people's homes, and money to build parking lots and maintain them, but don't have the brains to simply limit auto traffic on campus (costing nothing), which would save the enormous sums for the bridge, and for buying and demolishing homes and building parking lots.
Their excuses for all this are transparent sophistry.
1. The money for the bridge comes from another pot. Like that ever stops any bureaucrat when they want it.
2. The bridge won't increase campus traffic by one additional car, according to Wade Gilley, which is an idiotic statement on the face of it.
3. They aren't in the business of regulating students' driving behavior. They don't seem to have any problem with regulating other behaviors; this is simply worship of the automobile.
4. Chancellor Snyder offered some nonesense about regulations, budget review, the need for competitive bids, endless red tape, yadda, yadda, as an excuse for not doing anything about paying for the Urban Design Center on Market Square. Boy, that really stops them from confiscating and demolishing homes and paving them over with blacktop, doesn't it?
5. UT needs room to expand, even though they had more students on campus 25 years ago (because they didn't have so many cars then!). They will tear down the surrounding community to cater to students' needs to drive everywhere. And on and on and on.
Knoxville should stop accepting crap like this from the bureaucrats who run UT. Cutting expenses won't solve their problems. In the business world, when you hire someone to cut expenses to get a company out of trouble, you get disasters like Al Dunlap and Sunbeam. Any idiot can fire people and cut other expenses. It takes creative thinking, cooperation with the larger community, imagination to increase the need for their services, and outreach to give UT a better chance to solve their problems.
They can take a giant step toward progress by firing Phil Scheurer.
Robert Loest, Ph.D., CFA
Knoxville
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