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Ellen Belcher is the Dayton Daily News opinion pages editor. She writes about state government, education, the environment, higher education and all things Dayton.
Martin Gottlieb is an editorial writer and columnist for the Dayton Daily News opinion pages. He focuses on the political process itself and does such national issues as war, the economy, taxes and Social Security, as well as a hodge-podge of local and state issues.Home > Blogs > A Matter of Opinion > Archives > 2009 > April > 27
Monday, April 27, 2009
Editorial: Cosby knows what Central State gives
Earlier this month, Central State University pulled off a coup. For a second time, Bill Cosby did a benefit concert for Ohio’s smallest public four-year college and its only black public university.
Mr. Cosby has an affection for Central State that was born of a friendship with Josh Culbreath, the school’s former track coach and a bronze medalist at the 1956 Summer Olympics. More broadly, Mr. Cosby has a concern for black young people.
(Before the concert, Mr. Cosby gave a crowd of young people a sometimes stern, sometimes humorous talking-to. In the no-holds-barred way that he is known for when speaking to young black people about their personal responsibilities, he told the high school students that they had no excuse for not going to college. He told them to study hard, then to work and go to a community college while they saved money to attend a four-year school. He insisted that if the teenagers worked half as hard as the people taking care of them did, they’d get a degree.)
The comedian had told Central State he’d donate his time only if the school would commit to raising $2 million. (Last time he came, CSU raised $1.4 million.)
His requirement was intended as a challenge to Central State staff and supporters to be demanding of themselves and others about what the school needs. The 2009 Cosby Challenge, in the end, netted $2.6 million.
As hard as it was to raise that amount in this economy and over a period of just months, in truth, it is a small number in the world of college financing.
Earlier this year tiny, private Cedarville University, which has 3,000 students, completed a multi-year $11 million capital campaign.
In 2002, the University of Dayton, Ohio’s largest private university with a full-time undergraduate enrollment of about 7,100, wrapped up a campaign that was also multi-year and raised $158 million.
Three years ago, Wright State University, which has 11,300 undergraduate full-timers, completed a fundraising campaign that raised $123.1 million.
These were all capital campaigns, wherein fundraising teams literally spent several years beating the bushes. But, in fact, Central State has never had a capital campaign, and doesn’t have the institutional muscle and staff to make that effort.
The point is not to belittle Central State, which has about 2,200 students, or how far it has come. Rather, the point is that Central State has to scrap hard to raise what, in the grand scheme of things, is small change.
Before the concert, when Central State President John Garland told Gov. Ted Strickland that the school had exceeded Mr. Cosby’s goal, he went out of his way to say that the $70,000 that the state had given the school last year to put toward hiring a fundraiser had made all the difference in the world.
Yes, but: if any other university had Mr. Cosby in its corner, it would have had the capacity to put dozens of people to work leveraging his star power.
Working with what it had, Central State did itself proud. The floor of Ohio State‘s Value City Arena, where the Cosby concert was held, was mostly full, and Mr. Cosby looked out at a crowd.
When a video on Central State was rolled — several hundred prospective students were in the audience — the contrast between Central State’s buildings and where they were sitting couldn’t have been lost on the recruits. Yes, Ohio State is the state’s flagship university, but it probably spends more on mulch and flowers for its sprawling campus than has been put into some of Central State’s buildings and labs.
Central State is Ohio’s fourth-oldest university. If it is going to be around for generations to come, it has to overcome challenges that go beyond what many other universities face. For much of the school’s existence, it was among the few colleges in the state that blacks were allowed to apply to, or could feel comfortable attending. That fact of life guaranteed a ready-made supply of students, many of them exceptional.
Today, universities throw scholarships at gifted and talented minorities. In the face of that intense competition, Central State has to be as good as predominately white universities and other historically black colleges in its speciality areas, and it has to have niches that set it apart.
That’s hard to do on a shoestring, with a small student body that doesn’t produce a lot of economies of scale, and when faculty salaries aren’t competitive with bigger or richer universities. It’s this context that makes fundraising so vital.
Bill Cosby has been a great gift to Central State. In fact, though, it needs and deserves a lot more.
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment | Categories: Editorials, Education, Ellen Belcher, Higher Ed
Editorial: ‘Dirty money’ charge tarnishes commission
“I’ll let Warren County go broke before taking any of (President Barack) Obama’s filthy money.” — Warren County Commissioner C. Michael Kilburn.
All class, huh?
Commissioner Kilburn said he is “tired of worrying about people who don’t have.”
Oh, the burdens of worry. It can make one so tired.
The “filthy money” description was no momentary lapse of judgment. The commissioner also said, of money from the federal stimulus, “This is bad, filthy money, folks. This is money we don’t have.”
If that’s the definition of filthy money — money that’s borrowed — then the money spent in Iraq or, say, on the new Medicare coverage of prescription drugs is filthy, too. And a lot more besides.
In announcing his exhaustion from worrying about “people who don’t have,” Mr. Kilburn cited a conservative icon: “As (Ronald) Reagan said, ‘Government is not the answer, it’s the problem.’”
But Mr. Reagan would never have been so graceless as to talk about “Obama’s filthy money.” He could hold staunchly conservative views without getting ugly.
Reasonable people can disagree about the merits of the Obama administration’s efforts to get the economy moving. The nation has had a lively debate on it, which is all to the good.
Even on the Warren County Commission there’s some support for using the federal money in certain ways — on local roads (though the money for that wouldn’t be any cleaner; it also would be borrowed).
It’s remarkable how few places have rejected the money. But if that was to happen someplace in Ohio, Warren County was the likely spot. The county is so monolithically conservative that Republican politicians only worry about challenges from the right wing of their party, never from Democrats.
Moreover, Warren is one of the few counties in Ohio that has actually been growing. And it’s generally affluent.
And yet, about 1,870 people are reported to have lost their jobs there last year, at a time when replacement jobs are hard to find. Requests for food stamps are up about 60 percent, and building permits down by 35 percent, according to the Cincinnati Enquirer. Unemployment in February was 6.7 percent, which is way below the average for Ohio, but definitely is still not good.
The feds essentially offered Warren $373,000 for three new buses and vans, as part of an effort to help unemployed rural people get to job training and educational opportunities.
Whatever one thinks of the stimulus, one might expect leaders of a fully Republican county to appreciate that the Democrats are not excluding politically hostile territory from its benefits.
Moreover, the money will eventually go to somebody. Commissioner Kilburn says he wants Warren County’s share to go to deficit reduction. The commission has reportedly asked the county prosecutor to try to make that happen with other stimulus money the county has already received: $1.8 million to improve energy efficiency in government buildings (which would save local money in the long term).
But, of course, the feds have already decided they don’t want the stimulus money to go to deficit reduction, that being at direct odds with the goal of stimulating the economy in the short run. Nevertheless, Reps. Mike Turner, R-Centerville, and Jean Schmidt, R-Cincinnati, have put forth legislation trying to accommodate the county.
Maybe there is some county that can use the bus and van money better than Warren. But the commissioners would serve the community by taking a close look at each shot at stimulus money, rather than getting hostile.
If they are more eager to complain about national policy than to serve local constituents, a simple “No, thank you” (as, indeed, was offered by one commissioner), would have sufficed.
Permalink | Comments (6) | Post your comment | Categories: Editorials, Martin Gottlieb, Miami Valley Politics, Suburban Communities
