In order to survive, the University of the District of Columbia — which has already had furloughs and delays in opening — faces the loss of more than one hundred faculty members and serious cuts in its programs.
“We will have to cut off some fingers and toes,” said Dr. Reginald Wilson, a member of the board of trustees of the university. “But the university will apparently be saved.” With city legislators and members of Congress questioning whether the university should even exist, survival is not to be taken lightly.
First, UDC was forced to cut its budget by more than $30 million in one year. Then it was told to cut another $16.2 million and its president, Dr. Tilden LeMelle re signed on November 30, saying, “too often of late, the politics of blame and confusion over control of the District has focused on my stewardship of the University.”
Caught in the maelstrom of the politics of the District of Columbia, which has itself been nut under the control of a congressionally appointed financial control board, the university has had to argue for its very existence, reminding its city that no other college or university has as its mission educating the ordinary citizen. When the chairman of the Financial Control Board, Dr. Andrew grimmer, recently said that he sees a need for a public institution to serve the educational needs of the city’s citizens, UDC supporters breathed a collective sigh of relief.
“The question [of UDC’s survival] has been raised and the question has been answered,” said John Britton, public information officer for the university. That isn’t the last word from Brimmer, however. Brimmer’s control board has instituted a review that, in the words of Mark Goldstein, deputy executive director, “will examine the management and the structure of the university and its effectiveness in providing higher education. We expect that we would in our report make major recommendations for altering the structure of how the university provides both the education and the management structure that exists.”
The review, Goldstein said, will be completed in February. “We know that there are serious problems in the finance, management and programs of the university…that need tending to,” he said. These are the kinds of statements the control board made before finishing its review of the D.C. school system. Subsequently the board took over the system, firing its superintendent, demoting its school board and hiring Gen. Julius Becton Jr., former president of Prairie View A&M, to run the schools.
“We are not talking about eliminating the university,” Goldstein said. “We haven’t been more specific than that at this point.” When the new interim president of the university, Dr. Julius F. Nimmons Jr., submitted his budget that includes the $16.2 million cut, it called for eliminating 250 jobs, including 125 faculty members, and selling assets such as the radio station. After the cuts take effect, UDC will have 246 full-time faculty positions and 307 full-time non-faculty positions, the plan said.
