The Senate's Function

Remarks by Dr. Charles B. Reed

Chancellor, California State University

Florida Gulf Coast University Building Dedication

Ft. Myers, FL

February 16, 2001

Thank you very much.

It is an honor to be back with you today more than three years after I moved from this great state to another of the nation’s most dynamic states. As I’ve returned and looked around, what I see is an institution that is growing up rapidly.

Florida Gulf Coast University is no longer an infant organization, but one that is maturing under the nurturing of your president. I want to thank you, Dr. Merwin, for your work in continuing to build this university into a prized asset for the State of Florida and for the greater Fort Myers area and the Southwest Florida region.

I see many other familiar faces here of people whose work has been instrumental in the short life of Florida Gulf Coast University. I want to recognize some of my former staff members who are here today, including Roy McTarnaghan, Carl Blackwell, Patrick Riordan, Patricia Haynie, Michael Armstrong, and Sandra George.

In particular, I want to recognize Charlie Edwards, the former chairman of the Board of Regents, whose leadership was instrumental in creating this institution.

And I see faculty and staff and others who have made significant contributions that we should never forget. To Doug St. Cerny and the Lee County Commission, I want to express my appreciation for your steadfast work to make the dream of a university in Fort Myers a reality. Thanks must also go to Ben Hill Griffin and Alico for their working with the Board of Regents to make certain that this property would work for the university. And to Bernie Lester — we couldn’t have done it without you. Thanks for the first endowment.

And I must recognize the support of the Florida Legislature, for funding this effort in the way we asked. I want to recognize Frank Mann, Vernon Peoples, and Keith Arnold.

Also a special recognition in memory of Tommy Howard, who started this project when I was in the Governor’s office. I want to recognize his wife, Mary Frances, who is here today.

Roy McTarnaghan, of course, deserves the lion’s share of the credit for establishing one of the very few new public universities in the nation during the last few decades of the 20th Century. It was Roy who drafted the vision and the plan that created this place. And it was Roy who stuck with it and implemented it, through untold challenges.

Roy, the naming of this building for you is a highly appropriate honor...but it is only a small token of the high regard we hold for you because of the personal and professional qualities you have used in serving this state, Florida Gulf Coast University, and the State University System.

I guess the term “State University System” may no longer be appropriate in the near future, and I can’t let this occasion pass without a few comments.

Father Ted Hesburg, the former president of Notre Dame, recently said that our nation’s college and university presidents and chancellors didn’t speak out enough on important public policy issues. And if they didn’t, why would students speak out in the future? So —The demise of the Board of Regents is an unfortunate and unnecessary event for this state. It weakens higher education in Florida, and places in danger some of the independence that universities and their faculties and staff require.

I question whether Florida Gulf Coast University would even exist today had there been no Board of Regents. The great men and women on the Board of Regents served their state with distinction. Charlie Edwards, Clint Brown, Joan Ruffier, Alec Courtelis, Phil Lewis, Hank Watson, Elizabeth Lindsay — They had this state and higher education in the best interests of the people.

If you will remember, the study of the Board of Regents justified the creation of a new university here, based on a statewide analysis of college-attendance rates and distances to existing universities. Although there was strong community, business, and political support in the Fort Myers area for a new university to be created here, there also was similar support in other areas, such as North Palm Beach County.

The Board of Regents fulfilled an. essential role in establishing objective criteria for location of a new institution. The alternative, I fear, will be a reliance on temporary political power.. . on which area of the state can muster the most political strength within the legislature or with a governor. That approach is a prescription for inequity and inefficiency.

In short, I think the Board of Regents was essential to the creation of Florida Gulf Coast University and to building a state university system of national distinction. And in the long term, despite what the governor and legislature may do this year, a Board of Regents will be viewed as a necessary buffer for quality higher education in Florida.

Finally, let me express my gratitude for the honor you have given me in this naming ceremony. I am proud to be one of the pioneers who laid the groundwork for the creation of Florida Gulf Coast University. I will never forget this honor.

I hope I will be invited back in the years ahead to see once again what vision and hard work can do for this state and its students. Thank you.