This article is from the archives of the UB Reporter.
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Getting attention at UB Day

David Panasci and his mother, Faye Panasci, review drawings of the atrium of John Kapoor Hall, the new South Campus home of the School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences. The atrium will be named the Panasci Atrium in recognition of the family’s $1 million gift. Photo: NANCY J. PARISI

The UB Council unanimously approved a resolution congratulating the UB Bulls football team on its 2008 season. Pictured with a framed copy of the resolution are, from left, council member Edmond J. Gicewicz, President John B. Simpson, head football coach Turner Gill, senior defensive lineman Andrae Smith, senior quarterback Drew Willy, Director of Athletics Warde Manuel and UB Council chair Jeremy Jacobs. Photo: CONSTANCE HOLOMAN

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  • “People really listened; we got their attention.”

    Pamela Davis Heilman
    UB Council member

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    slideshow: Robert Pape, student representative to the UB Council, demonstrates the "tuition roulette" wheel to an Albany TV crew during "UB Day at the Capitol" in Albany. |

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By SUE WUETCHER
Published: March 4, 2009

They came. They saw. They were interested.

That’s the general response received by the 40-member UB delegation during its meetings with legislators and staff as part of UB Day in Albany, UB Council member Pamela Davis Heilman reported at the council’s meeting on Monday.

The delegation had traveled to Albany on Feb. 23 to lobby for the UB 2020 Flexibility and Economic Growth Act, a bill sponsored by the Western New York delegation and introduced in the state Senate and Assembly that would help UB achieve the objectives of UB 2020. The delegation included senior UB administrators, faculty and staff members, community members, students and council members Heilman, Christopher J. O’Brien, Edmond J. Gicewicz and Robert Pape, student representative to the council.

“The meetings that were scheduled for us throughout the day were extraordinarily meaningful; we met with absolutely everybody we needed to meet with,” Heilman said.

“People really listened; we got their attention. We had these great buttons—and so people were stopping us in the hallways to ask us who we were.”

Heilman said the highlight of the day was the appearance of Gov. David L. Paterson at a reception hosted by the delegation. She noted that Paterson had spent the weekend at the National Governors Association’s winter meeting in Washington, D.C.

“We had to have been literally his first stop as he came off the airplane,” she said of Paterson’s attendance at the evening reception, during which he delivered remarks. More than 200 people attended the reception, Heilman added, many of whom delegation members had met with earlier in the day and it gave them “a chance to re-engage and talk.”

“It was a very worthwhile day. We were in front of all the right people getting our message across.”

President John B. Simpson pointed out that the value of an effort like UB Day in Albany is that the key players in Albany—the governor and his staff, as well as legislators and their staff—“see that UB 2020 is important, not only to the president and the senior administration, but to the community.”

“Nothing is more enjoyable for me than to go there and watch people describe how important our university is to the community and how ‘spot on’ the agenda we have is to the future, not only to the university but to the community itself.”

Simpson noted that some labor unions want to differentiate between what they call the “UB 2020 vision” and some of the specific aspects of the legislation.

“My view is that all of these—whether we’re talking about the vision itself or the legislation which enables changes in tuition, as well as some of the aspects of how we do our business—these are all part of the same package,” he said.

“I see a wealth of possibility and I see remarkable things that can happen here, as well as in the university more broadly, over the next 20 years. But it’s going to require a substantial cultural change in how SUNY and how New York does its business,” Simpson said. “I think the resistance we’re running into is simply that we’re changing the culture.”

In other business, the council unanimously approved a resolution congratulating the UB Bulls football team on its stellar 2008 season. Warde Manuel, director of athletics, and head football coach Turner Gill attended the meeting, as did players Drew Willy and Andrae Smith. Manuel noted that the Division of Athletics was producing a DVD on the team’s championship season. Profits from the sale of the $19.99 DVD will go into the scholarship fund for student-athletes.