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Letters

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Published: Nov. 8, 2012

Publicize shale documents

To the editor:

I am a professor of English at UB and the Chair of UB CLEAR: a coalition of UB faculty, students, alums and other community members. We are a diverse group, with differing views on the wisdom of horizontal hydraulic fracturing, and we have taken no group stand on it. Rather, we have worked since this spring to bring transparency to the founding, funding and governance of UB’s Shale Resources and Society Institute (SRSI), and to show the significant and largely unacknowledged problems with its first publication, “Environmental Impacts During Marcellus Shale Gas Drilling: Causes, Impacts and Remedies.” Both SRSI and this publication have been the subject of statewide and nationwide controversy through the late spring, summer and fall.

On Sept. 12, the SUNY Board of Trustees asked UB for a report on SRSI. On Sept. 27, UB President Satish K. Tripathi sent that report to Chancellor Nancy Zimpher and the trustees. On Oct. 12, the trustees made the report public. We believe this report fails to respond candidly to the questions posed by the trustees and by many other New Yorkers since this spring. In “UB CLEAR Report to the SUNY Trustees,” a public letter to Mr. H. Carl McCall, chair of the SUNY Board of Trustees, we address President Tripathi’s report in detail.

UB CLEAR recommends that all UB and UB Foundation documents related to SRSI be made public and that UB establish clearer policies for regulating conflicts of interest and public-private partnerships. In view of the unsatisfactory response to previous questions about the institute and its publication, we also recommend that the institute itself be closed and that its first publication be recalled.

Jim Holstun
Professor of English
Chair, UB CLEAR

Allow Farmers Market to move inside

To the editor:

While visiting the Farmers Market in front of Capen last week, one of the vendors indicated that the ground floor Capen Lobby is no longer available for them to continue the market into the fall and again in the spring.

Having the market in the Capen Lobby would provide a local touch to parents and visitors, and benefit the local growers, students and staff alike.

Carol Adler
Academic Planning and Budget

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