Baylor Opts Out
Posted: Thu Feb 18, 2016 12:40 am
"In his report to the board, Baylor President and Chancellor Ken Starr announced that after consultation with Baylor students, faculty and staff, Baylor will opt out of Texas Senate Bill 11 (known as the campus carry law), according to provisions allowed in the legislation, signed by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott on June 1, 2015. President Starr highlighted the robust debate by Faculty Senate and Staff Council and the extensive work of Student Government, who sought feedback through two weeks of educational events, a panel discussion, public deliberation session, focus groups and a student online poll."
) to either use its own funds collected from other sources for abortions, decreasing the other services it (sometimes falsely) claims to provide, OR to stop providing either abortions or those other services. Without developing that particular line of thought any further vis-a-vis Planned Parenthood, because I don't want to turn this into a fight over PP and abortion, and without arguing whether or not it is a good thing that either PP or Baylor receive such funding, the FACT is that Baylor cannot legitimately claim that it operates independently of government funding......at least, not without cutting back on those kinds of extras that make it one of the better schools in the country, AND which add luster to its name. So, it accepts public money to burnish its image, so that it can continue to educate students, without having to cut back on the services it provides to those students in order to fund the name-burnishing projects.
) were both professors at Caltech, a PRIVATE institution which receives LARGE amounts of federal and state dollars for its part in owning NASA's JPL facility, assisting the U.S. Geological Survey Dept., staffing various NASA space missions, running various gov't atmospheric research projects, etc., etc., etc. These are all beneficial to the public, and as long as the accounting for the funding is on point, I don't necessarily have a problem with private institutions receiving public funds for research that is a benefit to society and/or expands man's knowledge of the universe in which he lives and of which he is a part. BUT....it is disingenuous to argue that they are not subsidized or funded by gov't......especially when you add in the gov't funded tuition for students who would not otherwise be attending these institutions. Whenever an institution accepts public funds so that it can do extra things - EVEN IF you couch it in terms of "fulfilling a contracted service", which by the way is often NOT the case, that is "gov't funding". An example in which that is NOT the case? My parents were both professors in the Humanities. Before my dad was hired by Caltech, you could not major in a Humanities subject there. My dad was instrumental in getting that changed, and over the years, Caltech has put together a humanities department which is competitive with those of other small, private universities, and you can now get a degree in History, or Literature, or whatever, at Caltech. THAT WOULD NOT HAVE HAPPENED if Caltech had not been able to divert funding from other operational costs in the sciences into hiring really good humanities professors; and that diversion of operational costs was made up, in part, by the monies received from gov't sources for research in those other disciplines. In instances where the gov't approaches the institution and says "we want you to research XYZ and give us the results", then yes, the institution is operating merely as a contractor. But when the institution proposes the research, and then goes out seeking gov't funding for it, it is no longer acting as contractor, but rather as recipient of gov't benevolence, and that is a horse of both a morally and legally different flavor.