IT MAY be a new semester, but University administrators are up to the same old tricks -- namely, rampant paternalism and frivolous spending. Students arrived on Grounds last week just in time to catch the latest example of administrative folly, an agreement to pay the city of Charlottesville to hire a new housing inspector specifically responsible for student off-Grounds housing. Once again, officials unable to keep up with the costs of funding a top academic institution are throwing money down the drain under the misconception that they are obligated to act as authoritarian overseers of an all-encompassing University community.
The move was finalized Jan. 18, when the University convinced City Council to accept a proposal in which the school will pay $115,000 over two years to fund the salary, benefits and vehicle costs of a new housing inspector who will conduct regular inspections of student housing areas to ensure that both landlords and residents fulfill their legal responsibilities. Officials reported that the City felt "understaffed" but lacked resources to fund a new inspector.
While the city certainly has an obligation to enforce regulations, it is almost inconceivable that the University should provide a financial windfall. Apparently, administrators have yet to grasp the concept of off-Grounds housing.
When students move off Grounds, they make a calculated decision to leave the University's protective umbrella in favor of the competitive prices and preferable location offered by private landlords. They become renters and residents, subject to the same trials and tribulations endured by Charlottesville citizens. While some educational institutions require students to live in campus housing for the duration of their study, the University, as a public school, rightly allows students to access academic services while managing their own living situation. Administrators are charged with maintaining the academic nucleus of the school, not every facet of the community that springs up around it.
Unfortunately, the administrative trend at the University, and at public schools nationwide, has tended more and more toward burgeoning paternalism. School officials, apparently convinced that they know what is in students' best interest, have continually demonstrated a desire to mold a community undergirded by their own beliefs.
Last week's decision to fund a new city inspector is less surprising considering administrators' ongoing desire to hold sway over off-Grounds housing. The school is currently constructing an office to centralize off-Grounds housing coordination on Grounds and has repeatedly shown interest in overseeing student-landlord interactions.
Simply put, the administration has no place in off-Grounds housing dealings. Issues pertaining to housing codes and legal regulations must be handled by renters, tax-paying landlords and the city. The school not only lacks the authority to step in whenever an aspect of the greater University community is not to administrators' liking, it lacks the financial resources as well.
The $115,000 allotted to housing inspection represents the salary of almost two full-time instructors. Administrators continue to give lip service to maintaining academic integrity, yet over the past four years have allowed class sizes to rise while they squander money extending their paternalistic power structure.
Jefferson no doubt intended the University's Academical Village to blossom into a thriving community. But administrators fail to understand that such a community ought to be an organic product that stems from the central seed of academics, not one forcibly shaped by an iron fist. As long as officials are willing to let academics whither while squandering thousands of dollars doing the job of local government, or funding $100,000 diversity training programs to reform the students' way of thinking, our community is in jeopardy.
Statewide higher education has made tremendous progress of late. The charter initiative will likely help free state schools from the unreasonable clutches of the General Assembly. But if administrators plan to use their new-found freedom to fritter away precious cash playing overbearing parents to our extended community, all efforts will be for naught.
It is high time that University officials reassessed their guiding philosophy. Administrative oversight must be reigned in and a new organizational and fiscal focus on academics should take precedent. While desire to control off-Grounds housing might not seem like a pivotal concern, such issues are indicative of an overarching way of thinking -- one that is currently taking the University in the wrong direction.
Nick Chapin's column appears Tuesdays in The Cavalier Daily. He can be reached at nchapin@cavalierdaily.com.
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