Without a Public Budget, Zimmer and Polonsky Must Both Resign Now

OPINION BY SID COLTON

An extremely depressing event, the suicide of a fourth-year College student on Saturday October 12th, has brought to the front the question of how The University of Chicago spends the money of its students and its patients.

The problem: No one knows how the University spends this money.

A year or so ago the Chicago Maroon was "gifted" by a Chicago citizen with a batch of loose papers that had a few details and clues about how much is spent for each department of the University. The citizen found this batch of papers in a trash Dumpster, on the north side of the city, near Belmont Ave!

Heretofore, this has been one of the only methods by which the world finds out exactly what the University of Chicago is spending on each department. It is also one of the methods from which the world learns about discussions of a few meetings at which these topics are discussed.

A better way must be found, to see how your money - the money of you students and you patients -- is actually being spent.

Seeing a line by line budget is now an absolute requirement, and it would create the following:

For some parts of the University which are critical to the health and well-being of students and patients alike ... a line by line budget could show that the University is doing the right thing by spending a sufficient amount of money on, for example, student counseling and therefore, student mental-health. Without these numbers in print for students and the public, we can only guess if the University is being diligent or reckless with the care and health of the College students, patients, and others who are paying the number-one highest tuition in the U.S., and whose medical/hospital fees are presumably among the highest in the nation as well.

The Chicago Maroon editorialized today about the need to know how much is spent on essential student support services such as mental-health-counseling, and academic counseling: https://www.chicagomaroon.com/article/2019/10/15/tuition-soars-quality-education-stalls/?fbclid=IwAR1u5hMCW3TS2kYDkWBsfhuVmLidGZHgbLuNPrmzXPUErmxtnDh67cAE-8k

There is a similar problem with the Medical Center. It is obvious that the Medical Center over the past ten years has seen a huge increase in the number of patients it treats. But: It is completely murky as to what extent that increase has been matched by an increase in the number of nurses, support staff, and doctors. The only things the public knows, are what the Medical Center chooses to say ... and there is no line-by-line budget for a citizen/patient to be able to judge the accuracy of those statements from the Medical Center.

Both the University and the Medical Center are being derelict in the common-sense obligation to let their students and patients know what they are paying for. President Zimmer and VP Polonsky need to, today, either announce that they are going to at-once publish complete information on what they are doing with their customer's money ... or they must each resign, at once.

There is no other choice for Zimmer and Polonsky to make.