Texts show Khator killed UH dorm plan
After a lengthy exchange with an angry state senator on Saturday, University of Houston Chancellor and President Renu Khator killed a plan to require most freshmen to live on campus, according to text messages the Houston Chronicle obtained Tuesday.
In the exchange with Sen. John Whitmire, Khator went from defending the plan to assuring the Houston Democrat she had ordered a halt to it.
“I have already killed any further consideration on it,” Khator said in one message after Whitmire had denounced the idea as insensitive to student needs and UH history. “Can you please forgive?”
In making the proposal, administrators had pointed to data that showed students make better grades, take more classes and have a better chance of graduating in four years when they live on campus.
The plan seemed set on Friday, when UH issued a news release saying freshmen would have to live
on campus starting in the fall of 2015. The release has been removed from the university’s website, where it was posted as recently as Monday.
UH officials confirmed Tuesday that the proposal had been scrapped, but did not comment further.
Back to drawing board
The f allout over the weekend highlights conflicting views of UH’s mission as the university strives to become a top-tier research institution. Khator came to UH six years ago as a transformative figure, drawing widespread praise for bold leadership. Part of her push has been to make UH a residential institution, rather than the commuter school it has long been.
But Whitmire, a UH alumnus, warned that the university should not lose sight of its historic role as a place for working-class students to get a quality education. Living on campus is unaffordable for some students, Whitmire said.
The conflict played out in the text messages he exchanged with Khator.
“You totally discount people like me that lived in an apartment with my mother and worked,” Whitmire told Khator in one text. “You are very insensitive to UH experience.”
Khator said she was sorry and would be “going back to the drawing board.”
The UH proposal included exemptions for students who are married or have children, or who live with their parents within 20 miles of campus. Whitmire told Khator that these exceptions wouldn’t include gay students, described 20 miles as an arbitrary distance, and said the plan would “just … run kids away from UH and start a firestorm.” His suggestion: “You need better advisors.”
The two eventually had a phone conversation, and Khator texted Whitmire afterward to ask if he was still upset.
“Is there anything I can do to ensure you it is killed from consideration?” she wrote. “You are the best critic/friend I have so I killed it on Saturday itself.”
Sen. Ellis also opposed
Whitmire was not alone in opposing the plan.
State Sen. Rodney Ellis, a Democrat whose district includes the university, said it’s best that the plan was killed. Ellis said living on campus helped him graduate from Texas Southern University in three years in the 1970s, but acknowledged the cost of college has increased greatly since then.
“I could get behind the idea of encouraging or incentivizing students to live on campus, provided they’re able to afford it, but I don’t think it should be a requirement,” Ellis said in a statement. “The cost of higher education is much higher than it was in the ’70s, so any policy proposals have to take that into consideration. With that said, I understand why UH is trying to find new ways to increase graduation and retention rates now that the Legislature is tying dwindling state funds to a school’s graduation rate.”