About three miles west from the center of campus sits an apartment complex that proved to be one of the most divisive issues of the 2005-06 school year.
For the University administration, the idea of selling the Westmoreland Family Housing Complex was a blessing. It’s forty years old; it needs repairs and the University didn’t quite have the cash. It’s miles from campus and fewer families are renting there than in the past. If the University could sell it for $18 million, it could pay of a $10 million debt that’s costing the University $1 million per year and use that money for new dorms or repair existing ones that have been labeled “terrible.”
For the Westmoreland tenants, the idea of selling the University’s only low-income housing unit was a nightmare. For low-income and non-traditional students, the sale of the apartment meant a potentially closed door to higher education. This was a fight for their future.
In October 2005, the University announced it’s intentions to sell the apartments. The announcement was met with staunch and collective opposition from the University Senate, the ASUO and the Save Westmoreland Coalition.
The battle went on for almost the entirety of the school year.
The scales finally tipped when the University announced in late May that a local developer, Michael O’Connell Sr., had made an $18.45 million offer. The 26-acre property that some 500 students once called home officially sold in July after it won the approval of the Oregon State Board of Higher Education, the final authority over the sale.
The months preceding were tumultuous, and the story intensified once the deadline for a sale proposal passed. Residents and community members accused the administration of threatening campus diversity in terms of international and non-traditional students and families. Students, neighbors and student government bodies fought for more than seven months before the University found a buyer. After two offers fell through because of the high price range of $15-18 million, it looked for a while as if no one was going to bite.
The board held several hearings on issue, one dragging on for nine hours. Each meeting drew the attention and attendance of many faculty members and students, both traditional and non-traditional, who gave testimonies in opposition.
With this opposition, the administration knew the sale’s approval would take some convincing, so it was decided that University President Dave Frohnmayer, the former dean of the law school who spent 10 years as the Oregon attorney general and won six of seven cases before the Supreme Court, would go before the board to argue the case.
At the final board meeting on July 14th, he won 10 of the 11 members’ approval, convincing them the sale is “unquestionably an action that is in the long term interests of the University of Oregon, its students, its faculty, its future and our larger community.”
After the sale, State Representative Bob Ackerman, who’d been working on the “Save Westmoreland” campaign with student leaders and the Westmoreland Tenants’ Council, told the Emerald that the approval went against the board’s policy to enhance diversity, calling it “anti-student, anti-nontraditional student and not in the interest of higher education.”
“If you shut down Westmoreland’s 404 units, there’s 404 students who have more difficulty with their education,” he said. “That builds up over time.”
All branches of the student government passed resolutions against the proposed sale, as did the University Senate, which comprises faculty and staff. Mostly, student and faculty leaders were upset with the abruptness of the decision to put Westmoreland on the market and their lack of involvement in the decision-making processes leading up to the proposal.
Last year’s ASUO administration grappled with the issue throughout the year. They argued primarily that the sale would harm campus diversity by eliminating some of the most affordable housing in Eugene. Westmoreland predominantly housed non-traditional students, including international, graduate and law school students, low income students and students with families.
Former ASUO President Adam Walsh said recently that while he was opposed to the sale during the year, because of the “unique environment and service that the current facility provides to so many students,” he thinks the administration, now that the sale is complete, will use the money in the best interest of the University community. Quoting a report released earlier this year, he said that the University is the only school out of seven in the Oregon University System that isn’t in debt.
“While I disagree with the sale based on the information provided to me by the administration, I also recognize that these are tough times characterized by ever shrinking budgets and resources. The University of Oregon is the only 4-year public school in the black, and that absolutely has something to do with the administrators running the school,” Walsh wrote in
an e-mail.
What happens now
In a recent interview, Frohnmayer refuted claims that the sale would make the University less diverse.
“There are a lot of arguments about the non-traditional student but there’s no evidence that we have disadvantaged anyone in a way that can’t be remedied by financial aid,” Frohnmayer said.
According to a University press release dated June 14, the University is offering to subsidize future rent increases with additional student loans, providing approximately $500,000 to cushion the blow.
The money earned from the sale will go toward renovations to existing residence halls, whose condition Frohnmayer recently called “terrible,” paying off debt accrued from already existing dorms and future property acquisition.
The sale will inevitably raise the cost of rent for residents. Due to renovations, which are expected to cost about $1 million, O’Connell said rent will rise 10 to 12 percent. Still, O’Connell hopes students will stay in the complex and take advantage of a new on-site child-care and workout centers, new kitchens, carpet, and windows, and new doors, light fixtures, interior paint and plumbing renovations.
“Perhaps,” he told the Emerald in late July, “things will be as good or better than they were in the first place.”