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If seeing is believing, University officials no doubt made believers out
of legislators by showing them some of the good, the bad and the ugly (but
mostly the bad and the ugly) during a March 17 tour of campus.
State Sen. Tony Rand, a Democrat from Fayetteville and co-chair of the
Joint Select Committee on Higher Education Needs, said he saw enough for the
General Assembly to look bad, too.
"It's been an important day, and in many ways it's been an embarrassing
day to see we have been no better stewards of our state's resources," Rand said
at the tour's end.
"We thank you for bringing it to our attention. We intend to bring it to
the attention of the entire General Assembly. We hope to be able to come up
with something."
What that something might be is still anyone's guess, but talk has at
least started about the possibility of pursuing a bond issue similar to the one
proposed a year ago.
Rand spoke outside of Hill Hall where, moments earlier, he had walked
through the Music Library that houses one of the South's preeminent music
collections.
Started in the 1930s, the collection now has more than 120,000 volumes and
was last valued at $26 million, said library director Daniel Zager. And every
day it is at risk, he said.
White steam pipes twist through the rows of shelves, crossing low enough
in the aisles to require that "Watch Your Head" warnings be painted on them. If
just one of those pipes should burst, much of that material could be
destroyed.
Even without bursting pipes, a faulty roof has caused the basement to
flood so often that a shop vacuum has been become another permanent
fixture.
"There were wonderful things, irreplaceable things that we are just kind
of making do with," Rand said.
Last year, the Senate passed a $3 billion bond measure that would have
yielded $500 million for Chapel Hill. The House approved another bill for about
a $1 billion bond that, unlike the Senate's version, would have required a
public vote.
The chambers failed to reach a compromise before adjourning, leaving
Carolina and the other 15 UNC system campuses without additional money for
capital needs.
Rand, asked if a bond might be this year's answer to the problem, said,
"Sure, it would have to be."
Rep. Lyons Gray, a Republican from Winston-Salem who also serves on the
joint committee, said the case for a bond may not be any stronger this year
than it was last year.
Last year, the UNC General Administration assembled the facts to support
its case for a capital bond issue, Gray said. This year it is doing a better
job of assembling political support that will be needed to get the legislature
to act on the idea.
"They tried, in my opinion, to harvest the fruit before the seed had been
planted and the water and the fertilizer and the sunshine had a chance to
work," Gray said of last year's effort by the UNC General Administration.
"Before you start harvesting the crop, you have to work at it a little bit.
We're working at it now. We're seeding the ground."
No pretty picture
White blossoms swirled like snowflakes as the members of the
delegation gathered among the cherry trees along South Columbia Street to be
welcomed by Interim Chancellor William O. McCoy.
McCoy stood in front of the Medical Science Research Building, home of the
Department of Cell and Molecular Physiology. The red-brick building, framed by
the cherry trees and cast against the cloudless, blue sky, looked good,
acknowledged Jeffrey Houpt, dean of the School of Medicine. To find out how
ugly it really is, he told legislators, they needed only to step inside. If
they smelled smoke, they were not to worry. It was from a fire put out the
night before.
If their shoes felt squishy, that would be because of a morning
flood.
The main stop inside the building was the laboratory of Sharon Milgram, a
scientist who studies how cells clean foreign pathogens from airways. The
research is vital to fighting diseases such as cystic fibrosis and asthma. Yet
her lab lacks air conditioning, which on some days makes breathing a chore for
her and her colleagues. But if they open a window, they risk ruining their
experiments with pollen.
The University's long-range plan calls for a new medical research building
that would serve as the setting for groundbreaking work in a number of
areas.
Two of the most promising areas are genomics and bioinformatics --
research that Houpt likened to a beautiful jigsaw puzzle for which scientists
are still finding and fitting the pieces. When it's all put together, the
picture that emerges could lead to cures for cancer and other diseases, Houpt
said.
The proposed cost of the building is $64.7 million, of which the
University is seeking $33.7 million from the state. Lawmakers already have
appropriated $7 million for foundation work.
Houpt said the University is not asking for a "handout" but rather a
"helping hand."
Un-venerable Venable
For sheer decay, decrepitude and obsolescence, Venable Hall holds no
equal.
No other building on campus is more vilified -- or less viable.
No other building can rival the assault it makes on the senses.
It's a maddening maze of dark, dank hallways; musty carpet; peeling paint;
corroded pipes and mildew-stained ceilings. Foul odors emanate from its bowels.
Whenever it rains, water pours in from the holes in the roof to form puddles on
the basement floor.
And it's home base for the chemistry department's faculty offices,
research laboratories and library.
University officials want to replace it with a new $73.35 million science
complex that would put chemistry, physics, astronomy and mathematics under one
roof.
For these reasons and more, the 73-year-old monstrosity made the perfect
backdrop for lunch and Provost Richard "Dick" Richardson's brief history lesson
on the consequences of legislative responsibility and neglect.
First, he noted that the first time a group of legislators set out from
Raleigh for Chapel Hill was in December of 1792.
Their eight-day ride on horseback ended with the selection of a site for
the new state university, and it marked the beginnings of the state's
two-century commitment to higher education.
The state's legacy of vision and sacrifice has transformed what is the
oldest public university in the country into one of its finest as well,
Richardson said.
The purpose of the March 17 visit, Richardson told legislators, was to
convince them to build on their long legacy by providing the money needed to
keep the University's aging buildings from falling apart.
Chemistry professor Holden Thorp led the tour through Venable to
illustrate for legislators what Richardson had told them.
Last year, the department brought in nearly $10 million in external
research funding. Technologies spawned from department research have generated
new jobs and new companies throughout the Triangle, including Xanthon Inc., a
company founded by Thorp.
"Our department is a very important part of the traffic jams we have on
I-40," Thorp said. "It's our goal to make them even worse."
But the chemistry program cannot stay on an upward path when stuck in a
building in such decline, Thorp said.
Perhaps no spot on campus better typifies a disaster waiting to happen
than the laboratory of chemistry professor John Boland. And Thorp made sure
legislators got to see it.
Here, pans have been inserted in the ceiling in place of tiles to catch
rainwater and to keep it from dripping on microscopes that are each valued at
half a million dollars. Electrical cords spread like vines across the floor and
walls.
The work that is done here is "scanning tunneling microscopy," Boland said
in an interview before the legislative tour. It involves watching chemical
reactions of atoms through microscopes. And the work would not get done without
the help of undergraduates and graduate assistants, Boland said.
Many of them have come here after turning down offers from places such as
Harvard, California-Berkeley and Cal Tech, Boland said. These top-drawer
students, Boland said, "are the horses that pull our wagon."
These students choose Carolina's chemistry department because it remains
one of the top-ranked departments in the country, known both for the quality of
its research and dedication to teaching, Boland said.
And it is these same traditions that attract and keep faculty members,
Boland said, knowing as they do that the new science complex will some day
materialize.
But Boland fears that many of the best students will not be as patient,
especially now that new science buildings already are popping up at states from
Texas to Florida to Virginia.
And when the best students stop coming, Boland fears, the quality of the
program will start dropping.
"When the quality shifts dramatically to lower-qualified students, it's
over," he said. "We're in really deep trouble and we're really at that
precipice right now."
The hidden cost of doing nothing
In January, UNC President Molly Corbett Broad developed a
comprehensive funding proposal that included charging students with new
facility fees. The idea never gained support, and she quickly dropped
it.
Since then, Broad has sought the advice and support of business leaders
and officials within the state community college system while allowing time for
the joint legislative committee to do its work. The series of legislative tours
to member campuses and community colleges has been a key part of UNC General
Administration's strategy of building legislative support for capital
funding.
That support was clearly evident throughout the March 17 tour that also
included stops at N.C. State and N.C. Central universities.
Phil Phillips, president of the N.C. Citizens for Business and Industry,
said that Carolina consistently ranked among the top dozen universities in the
country in the mid-eighties. By 1999, it had dropped below the top 25.
In 1986, the General Assembly spent 17.4 percent of its general fund budget on the UNC system. By 1999, the
percentage of the state budget earmarked for higher education had dropped to 13
percent.
Phillips said he is convinced there is a "direct cause and effect
relationship" between the drop in national rankings and the shrinking state
support.
James O. Roberson is president and chief executive officer of the Research
Triangle Foundation of North Carolina. The foundation's members are the owners
and developers of the Research Triangle Park.
During the bus ride from Raleigh to Chapel Hill, Roberson talked of how
the presence of three nationally ranked research universities -- Carolina, N.C.
State and Duke -- spurred the creation of the Research Triangle Park.
More than 40 years and 40,000 jobs later, the park now serves as the
economic engine of the state. And throughout the park's history, the
universities have supplied the requisite brain power to keep that engine
running strong.
Now, Roberson fears that engine is at risk of sputtering should the
quality of the universities fall.
"When the park started, per family income was 49th among the 50 states,"
Roberson said. "Mississippi was the only one behind us. Mississippi is still
50th. We're 31st and we're moving up and that's because of the tremendous
magnet that these three universities have been. It is just critical that the
legislature responds to the needs that we are seeing here today."
Roberson said North Carolina has become a model of what other states are
now doing. But being a model is not enough. It takes a commitment of money to
sustain it. And that hasn't been happening.
"If you stop and think, there is a billion dollars or more of contract
research that comes into this area because primarily of these universities. If
they don't have the right facilities, that billion dollars is not going to
come."
Rep. George W. Miller Jr., a Durham Democrat and the committee's co-chair,
said he was embarrassed by what he saw on campus.
"For those of us who have served in the legislature now for a number of
years, it's an embarrassment to us that we have allowed this to happen," Miller
said. "And we don't intend for it to continue to happen, either. We will do
something about it."
Roberson said he supports a bond.
"Using bonds means we are able to do what needs to be done now and pay for
it with the rewards that we will reap as the result of that investment,"
Roberson said. "There will be an enormous return on it.
"I certainly hope that the General Assembly makes the decision. Whether it
goes to a vote of the people or they do it on their own is not as important as
deciding to get it done."
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