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That is a loaded question when it comes to my school.
For those of ya'll who don't know - John Silber is chancellor of Boston U. He's come under fire over the past, oh, 20 years for the following:
1) eliminating the gay student alliance at Boston U. Academy, a high school run by boston university.
2) elminiating mass numbers of faculty jobs because he thought they were un-needed, and because he wanted to RAISE the student to faculty ratio (yes, raise it). In addition, he has resisted making repairs on buildings on campus, putting money into building more dorms and other lesser problems.
3) he instituted an unpopular guest policy that makes it nearly impossible for BU students to get into dorms on campus that they dont' live in.
4) he has a hatred of the greek system - he sold all of our on-campus houses to MIT, and nearly drove the system out of existence before a comeback in the mid to late 80s. This is the same guy who advocated cutting the football program of University of Texas when he was a Dean there in the 60s
There's a host of other complaints about him, but there are some positives.
1)He's raised Boston U.'s reputation from that of a commuter school to one of the top universities on the east coast - the college of communication, management, and engineering are some of the top schools in the country, and the medical program and law school are very good programs as well.
2) he has raised alumni relations to the point where the alumni board of control gives massive amounts of money; the BU endowment is extremely large and, although donations have decreased in the past few years, the school still does very well; part of that is the fact that it's the 2nd biggest landowner in Boston, but that's a whole other story.
3)if you sit down and talk to him, he really is quite an intelligent and reasonable man. I saw him speak at a couple of Campus Leadership dinners, and he's actually not a bad guy to talk to; if you listen to him one-on-one, you actually get to see some of the points he's made, and the papers have sort of made him into the second coming of Satan.
That said....I don't agree with a hell of a lot of his decisions, and question some of his tactics - for all he has done though, he's helped out BU a ton.
Not sure of what to rate him, because there are just too many sides of the story.
(sorry this was so long)
Collin
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