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Published: July 18, 2008 08:38 pm
Readers' Forum: July 19, 2008
Defense of lab fee usage misses mark
I am surprised that Dr. Peter Scott would try to justify Amlaner’s misuse of student fees (Tribune-Star letter of July 15), but I will briefly address what Dr. Scott said and did not say.
First, Dr. Scott did not mention that some laboratory fees were listed as going to his personal research program. It is possible that a small number of undergraduates worked in his laboratory. However, students working in research laboratories do not pay fees, and fees collected from teaching laboratories are not supposed to support research. Each department receives general operating funds that can be used sparingly to support research.
Using laboratory fees to purchase a truck simply cannot be justified. A truck costing $28,000 greatly exceeds the purchase maximum of $2,500. More importantly, one does not spend $28,000 in laboratory fees for an item that does not transport students but “comes in handy” two times a week for one semester a year. Furthermore, the department already had vans (purchased with university-supplied equipment funds) for transporting students, and the department can use university vehicles. The truck was simply a research vehicle purchased with student fee money.
The university has made it quite clear that neither the truck nor an office copier was an appropriate use of fee money. Accordingly, the College had to reimburse the laboratory fee account for both items. Thus far, the College has not reimbursed the fee account for funds that went to individual research programs. The College also has not questioned the wisdom of continually buying vehicles that consume $4-a-gallon gas.
Dr. Scott cites a whole list of equipment (including microscopes) purchased for his teaching laboratory over a period of two years. Adding in the price of the “handy” truck, the total package comes to well over $50,000. The laboratory fees collected from Dr. Scott’s course over the same two-year period amounted to approximately $5,000. Yes, Dr. Scott’s teaching laboratory fared very well. However, the large general biology laboratory that contributed a large proportion of the fees was less fortunate.
Dean Sauer of the College of Arts and Sciences has assured me that before the laboratory fee for general biology was approved, Dr. Amlaner had to write a detailed account of how the funds would be spent. I have not seen the account written by Amlaner, but I’m quite sure that it did not say that the funds would be used for a truck or lavished on an unrelated small laboratory. Perhaps written promises are simply perfunctory exercises that involve a lot of administrative winking.
Dr. Scott states that “Dr. Amlaner helped keep this (a laboratory going downhill) from happening by reminding faculty that it was OK to spend money and that physical equipment was important.” Is this the same Dr. Amlaner who later refused to contribute funds to buy microscopes for the general biology laboratory (a course shared by two departments), stating in writing that fee money in excess of $500 could not be used for equipment?
Think about the honesty of this whole scenario. Dr. Amlaner spent a large proportion of the laboratory fees on equipment (including the truck and a copier), and then piously claimed that he could not use laboratory fees to purchase microscopes that would directly benefit the laboratory that generated almost half the laboratory fees. Wow, let the canonization begin.
— Jim Hughes
Terre Haute
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