Volume 67, Issue 4

"Expert" Advice

The Commentator has long decried the lack of administrative attention attributed to students’ concerns, especially when our objections are iterated time and time again.  For years, students have condemned the shoestring budgets appropriated to our academic departments and corresponding services by the Vice President for Business Affairs Dr. Sheldon Socol, especially in light of our school’s endowment, one of only two in the country to appreciate this past year.  While we considered this condemnation of budget appropriation justified, the administration apparently didn’t.  Until now, that is.

The recent report issued by the Middle States Accreditation team made one thing abundantly clear: the “penurious approach to the funding of the University’s undergraduate program is at odds with its state priorities.”  Read: Dr. Socol’s fiscal priorities are driven by something other than the goals deemed vital to the University’s survival.  Translation: the students are getting gypped out of a higher quality education and other basic necessities because of one man.  Déjà vu?  We think so. 

Based on a number of follow-up correspondences from the Vice President for Academic Affairs Dr. Morton Lowengrub to the Accreditation Commission petitioning them to revise their fiscal reprimand, it seems as though the report will likely spur change.  Although we would applaud fiscal restructuring, we feel slighted by the recourse in which it was achieved.  Is Dr. Lowengrub really telling us that the Middle States team was able to accomplish in three days – the length of their visit – what students have not been able to do in over a decade?  If he is, then we recommend that he rebuff the report.  He clearly missed the point.   

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