The regents should make College Hill a place for the University of Hawaii faculty, not the president. So far, the keener we are for a president, the more we sweeten the pot. So we’ve been bidding against ourselves, and we’ve been paying too much.
To include College Hill in the package would be unnecessary if not lavish. Like everyone else at UH, the president should find his own home, especially if we pay him a $500,000 salary.
There’s something missing in Manoa: a place for the faculty. So often, different departments sooner mingle across the world than across the quad. Our faculty need a physical place where they can meet for cross-disciplinary networking.
In a world of social media, nothing does so well as face-to-face contact, especially with meals and food, and nothing is as professionally stimulating as the ability to share one’s science or scholarship in person with one’s colleagues.
College Hill is a splendid place for faculty. Frank Atherton bought the 3-acre lot in 1902 and built an impressive 16-room mansion on it. His family deeded it to the university in 1964.
Atherton’s grandson says the family had "hoped" it would be a residence for the UH president, but the only restriction in the deed is that no alcohol be sold there. Hope, of course, is not binding.
No UH president has lived in the house since 2009. It was wrong that M.R.C. Greenwood did not live there and then asked the regents to pay her $5,000 per month for a Waikiki condo. Most people saw that as an inappropriate indulgence.
Serendipitously, the five-year vacancy gave the regents time to put the property to better use. Greenwood, to avoid criticism, suggested it be the "University’s House" for fundraising and entertaining, but that use has been limited.
The university has spent some $2 million on debatable renovations over recent years, plus $115,000 in annual maintenance. Any cost-benefit analysis would surely fail; the outmoded president-in-residence model no longer works.
It’s odd that the regents have spent so much money on College Hill when at the same time they deferred repair and maintenance of a half-billion dollars on so many other buildings.
If opened, College Hill could go from orphan to icon. It could symbolize science and scholarship for the university and the community. It would send a message that we care about our faculty and seriously want to create a great university.
Beyond its aesthetics, it’s located a minute away from the campus and has a big lanai and entry, comfortable meeting rooms and a kitchen large enough to support a club. It would be far more useful as a place for faculty than as a residence.
It would also be perfect for gatherings of visiting scholars and scientists, dignitaries, grantor agencies, donors, students, parents, alumni, regents, officials and the public, and could play a useful role in recruiting faculty and students. This would be wonderful for the university.
Objections to opening College Hill have been raised by neighborhood NIMBYs who don’t want anything to happen there. For them now to be surprised that College Hill might have collegial activities is disingenuous. Manoa has always been a college community. If the NIMBYs don’t want to have that near them, they should move.
For the regents to keep College Hill empty while they pay the costs of renovation and wait months or years for a new president is a study in dissociative inaction. They seem captive to expensive searches and pay packages of ever-increasing extravagance. It’s time to step back.
We can find a good president without throwing in the house. We know that more money doesn’t make a better president. We need a president who is more interested in education. If he cares about the school, he won’t want the house. If it’s nevertheless offered, he won’t take it. Good.
This is a time to change the strategy. College Hill should come off, and stay off, the table. The regents should favor a culture of faculty over football. They should do this soon, before they negotiate themselves into giving the house away.
Their decision will cast a political shadow either way. If the regents won’t break away from the old, outmoded model, they’ll be putting the new president, and the university itself, at risk with the faculty, the Legislature and the community.
Fifty years is enough. Now, between presidents, is the best time for the regents to act. We don’t need to sacrifice College Hill. Instead, let’s make it a true Chautauqua for the faculty, and for the university, and leave raj royalty behind.
