Tallahassee Democrat editorial: “Attack on engineering school stinks”

From the Tallahassee Democrat editorial board on Friday, April 4:

On Wednesday evening, state Sen. John Thrasher, R-St. Augustine, offered a surprise amendment to the state’s budget that would let Florida State University end its 30-year involvement with FAMU in their joint College of Engineering and start to plan for its own engineering school.

On Thursday, senators approved the amendment by a voice vote. And Florida A&M alumni and supporters had the same sick feeling they experienced in the mid-1960s, when the state took away the university’s law school in favor of FSU’s.

The timing and the process of this latest move stink.

Mr. Thrasher, a noted supporter of FSU who even has been rumored to be a candidate as the next president of the university, said the split would benefit Florida A&M.

But Florida A&M certainly did not ask for this change. In fact, the FAMU Board of Trustees was caught off guard and called an emergency meeting Thursday.

In reality, it doesn’t even matter whether FAMU can sustain the program on its own. Does anyone honestly think the Legislature would continue to fund two colleges of engineering in Tallahassee?

Florida State certainly deserves support as one of Florida’s two pre-eminent universities. But not at the expense of Florida A&M. And certainly not this way.

Read the full version of the editorial here.