LETTER: College of Medicine given undue priority
On Monday night, I attended an SGA meeting that featured Central Michigan University President George Ross. I listened quietly as he spoke and fielded questions, and I was struck by a number of things.
Firstly, President Ross is a remarkable politician.
The way he fielded questions, sometimes answering them, and other times not answering while giving the appearance of answering them. Truly masterful. Especially when I asked you about how university costs across the country have been going increasingly to bloated administrations and not to faculties, and asked you to assuage my fears this was happening at CMU. I’m sure you answered somebody’s question, sir, but you did not answer mine.
Secondly, I was reminded where the focus of much of the student body is when someone asked him whether or not they’d change the tailgating rules for the future home game against Michigan State University. You have the President of CMU in a room, fielding questions, while your professors fight for a contract and your administrators act dubiously in contract negotiations and the progression of CMED, and you feel you should ask about the tailgating rules for a football game a year from now?
Sigh.
But what struck me the most was the glimmer of truth that is hiding underneath it all.
All you have to do is connect the dots. While discussing Academic Prioritization, President Ross stated, and I quote, “There is a commitment for additional resources” for programs that are given a rating of 1 by the Final Academic Prioritization report.
Now, that’s not hard to understand.
If programs rated 4 and 5 are reduced or eliminated, the money from those programs’ budgets would most likely go to programs rated 1 to 3. However, the reader needs to keep in mind that CMED was given a rating of 1.
Ignoring for a moment the problem with rating a program that has not held one class, a program that has not graduated a single student, has not certified one doctor, and is essentially an unaccredited dream at this point a higher rating than established programs that have graduated hundred, thousands, maybe tens of thousands of students: If money from 4 and 5 ranked programs will be going elsewhere, if there is a “commitment for additional resources” for programs given a rating of 1, how can the administration say no tuition dollars are going to CMED?
This is the claim, I believe, that came out from the recently revealed documents. How can they claim that they are not gutting programs for the benefit of a pet project? President Ross essentially admitted to it.
I’m not against a medical school. I am against a medical school that comes with the price of established programs. I am against giving a pet project that isn’t even accredited priority over or alongside accredited programs graduating students. I am against a medical school that is built upon the corpses of the faculty.
Michael Lonsberry Holt Alumni Representative of “Students for Faculty” RSO
