I would like to commend your managing editor Evan Pierce for his editorial of Oct. 17 ("The kids are alright"). In countering the misrepresentation that UB students are to blame for the decay of the University Heights, Pierce pointed to the obvious role the university itself is contributing to the state of affairs.
Such question gains additional significance in relation to the policies the current Simpson administration seems to pursue under the amalgamation of "excellence." Improving performance and boosting the competitive edge of the university as a research institute are few of the facades this administration is using in its conquest to change how things are done around UB. One of the effects of this new policy deserved front page coverage in The Spectrum's same issue ("UB arts on decline," Oct. 17) - firing professors in departments such as arts on the absurd grounds of not conducting "research." Denying faculty tenure, enforcing a narrow definition of what counts as "real" and "scientific" research, valuing research over students, minimizing "efficiency" to generation of grant monies and contribution to UB's competition with other institutes of higher education. These are some of the effects felt internally.
On the external front, one can talk about the intentional continuation of unwillingness to truly engage with economic and social concerns of the community, of which the conditions Pierce highlighted in his column are good examples. An obsessive focus on efficiency and performance (of course in the managerial non-artistic sense) internally, sheer disengagement from community externally - the growing infiltration of private, corporate culture into a public university unfortunately means nothing else.
The assumed "inefficiency" that the Simpson administration is trying to rid UB of, through the widely publicized and catchy "UB2020," apparently has to do with the university not being corporative enough. Within this frame one can assess the claims of the "excellence" crusade and its projected benchmarks more realistically: the generation of profit and enhancement of partnership with big business, rather than with the city and its community.
