terrapinsanity.com

Congrats and a tip of the hat once again to Freeman Hrabowski’s UMBC chess team for placing well (second) in a prestigious national competition. In the last decade they have been regulars in win, place or show at the national level, and garner some great visibility for campus scholarship along the way.

Today’s news cycle handily illustrates some contrasts between UMBC and College Park campus leadership, contrasts which are increasingly noticed around the state even if not in the rarefied reaches of Main Admin. At the same time readers learn that UMBC canvasses donors to support chess scholarships which enable nationally-recognized cerebral achievements, they learn that UMCP canvasses donors to support construction of a new President’s Residence. With a reported price tag of $7.2 million, the move is described by campus as necessary because the old residence was a “lousy place to throw a party.”

Scholars who lack updated facilities for research, students who study in classrooms with leaky roofs or live in housing with untenable plumbing, and staff who have endured years of furloughs while working under the whip of tone-deaf, self-absorbed leadership will all sleep easier tonight knowing that their president will soon have a better place to throw a party.

Taxpayers will surely see other kinds of news from these campuses over time. After all, this is just one news cycle. Or as chess-master Hrabowski knows it, just the next move in a long game.