Reading about the University of Southern Maine’s latest administrative shenanigans, “UMaine trustees to vote on USM’s ‘white houses'” (March 16), I was struck by the adjectives used to describe the tiny homes used as faculty offices on Chamberlain, Deering and Granite streets: “energy hogs,” “maintenance black holes,” “academic silos” and so on.

What numbers back those statements, and how do they compare to the giant complexes towering nearby or in Gorham?

I then remembered reading a letter written by William Dunlay, who had been USM’s director of energy and utilities until March 2014. A victim of USM’s budget cuts, Dunlay wrote that the university spends $4 million on energy-related costs each year. He proposed savings of $1 million annually and detailed how investment in efficiency creates savings over time; enough, for example, to pay his salary or save an academic programs.

The strategy was common sense, since USM was a “careless homeowner,” wasting heat and light when no one was around. How embarrassing for administrators to get a real solution to budget woes, and still conclude that they must instead pursue a more destructive path of layoffs and program eliminations.

Never mind that “sustainability” is the task of our century.

So now the administration’s newest plan for “rationalizing” USM: selling those faculty office buildings. Does a one-time sale of homes assessed at about $1.3 million and a reduction in “overhead” costs of $300,000 annually sound like as good a deal as the once-proposed savings of $1 million in reduced energy costs every year? Not really. Will it prevent layoffs? Not in the long term.

Is the administration in charge of USM moved by common sense? I have my doubts.

Matt Hopkins

Manchester

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