Tripathi offers campus news update to PSS

President Satish K. Tripathi discussed funding for athletics, parking downtown and a controversial student art project during his annual meeting with the Professional Staff Senate on Dec. 17.

Tripathi began by highlighting several major accomplishments that brought positive attention to the university in recent weeks, including $6.2 million in federal funding for continuation of UB’s Women’s Health Initiative; announcement of the second Marshall Scholar in the past three years; Allen Greene’s promotion to the role of athletics director; several faculty honors; and the new UB H.O.M.E. program. “This is a typical month at UB. This is how we do things here now,” he said.

But, Tripathi acknowledged, being a large university with so much going on has its challenges. He talked about steps he has taken to meet with several student groups on campus in the aftermath of the controversial “White Only/Black Only” student art project that many people on campus found unsettling. “That created insecurity for many of our students,” Tripathi said, adding that he has met three times with student leadership groups to continue the dialogue. He said it’s important to have academic freedom on campus, “But you also have to have an inclusive environment where people feel safe.”

In the short term, Tripathi has outlined an interim policy where art in public spaces around campus must be identified as such. Current university policy already requires that the placement of art projects in public areas on campus be reviewed by Environment, Health and Safety for safety and security issues.

“But that’s not a permanent solution,” he said of the interim policy, noting he’s working with faculty to develop a long-term policy. “We don’t want to be censoring anything, but at the same time we don’t want to have an environment where people feel unsafe.”

After his 20-minute update, Tripathi fielded questions from PSS members. He was asked about a recent scathing newspaper article about athletics funding at the university. Tripathi said the Division of Athletics received a bump in funding a few years ago, but that will not continue, a message he said he reiterated to Greene, the new AD.

He asked for a show of hands of how many people feel athletics are important to UB; the majority of people in attendance raised their hands. He also said there were a number of inaccuracies in the article and noted that a correction appeared in the newspaper a week after the story ran. “If you compare the athletic budget, it’s actually in the middle of the MAC,” Tripathi said, adding that the university has hired many new faculty and staff in the past year. “It’s really no more than what any other MAC schools are investing. What we expect is, if you belong to any conference, you should be competing with your peers and you should be winning,” he added.

Tripathi pointed out that athletic success is often a source of pride among alumni, and noted how many UB supporters traveled to Columbus, Ohio, last spring when the men’s basketball team made its first appearance in the NCAA Tournament. “How does that pride translate into something else, that’s a million-dollar question. It’s very hard to translate that,” he said.

Tripathi also was asked about athletics’ recent emphasis on “New York.” “We are going through a (university-wide) branding initiative and we want to create a UB brand that people understand. Inside that brand, there could be multiple ways to express yourself,” he said.

As for parking on the Downtown Campus, Tripathi said the approach has to be different than on the North Campus due to space limitations. But, he added, plans have been underway for the past two years to address parking to accommodate the influx of faculty, staff and students who will be downtown when the new Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences building opens. He also noted that a parking garage on the Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus will be replaced with a bigger one with more spaces.