Pictured Above: St. Petersburg Mayor Rick Kriseman (left) says that USF President Steve Currall shows the same lackluster support for St. Petersburg that his predecessor, Judy Genshaft, displayed for years.
Courtesy of Rick Kriseman on Facebook and USF
By Nancy McCann
As the USF administration was planning for consolidation in late 2018, St. Petersburg Mayor Rick Kriseman and 19 other elected officials in Pinellas County wrote a letter outlining concerns and suggestions.
One suggestion was straightforward: Keep USF St. Petersburg accessible to Pinellas high school graduates.
“We share the desire to boost USF’s standing, and the benefits those rankings bring, but would emphasize that USFSP remain attainable for the diverse array of students that call Pinellas County home,” the letter said.
Now, nearly two years later, freshman enrollment in St. Petersburg has plummeted after campus admissions requirements were rapidly raised to meet the university’s aims under consolidation.
This fall, the once-thriving downtown campus has less than half of the first-time freshmen it had in 2016, with only one new black freshman — and Kriseman is unhappy.
In a told-you-so interview with The Crow’s Nest, the mayor said the stunning enrollment figures are “exactly what we feared” would happen.
He said USF President Steve Currall is offering the same lackluster support for St. Petersburg that predecessor Judy Genshaft showed for years as she focused on her primary goal of making USF a preeminent state research university.
“This preeminence and the money that comes with it will ‘lift all boats.’ That’s all fine and dandy if you have a ticket to get in the boat,” Kriseman said.
The mayor was referring to the reason often given for consolidation – “a rising tide lifts all boats” – by state Rep. Chris Sprowls, R-Palm Harbor, the principal architect of the legislation that abolished USF St. Petersburg’s independence and required the three USF campuses to seek single accreditation.
The ‘rising tide’ refers to USF Tampa’s achievement in 2018, when it became one of Florida’s three preeminent universities.
“If you’re not sitting in the boat, it doesn’t matter that the boat gets lifted,” Kriseman said.
The November 2018 letter was signed by Kriseman, U.S. Rep. Charlie Crist, D-St. Petersburg, three Democratic state legislators, and every member of the St. Petersburg City Council and Pinellas County Commission – both Democrats and Republicans.
In recent months, however, many of those officials have gone silent.
Crist did not respond to an interview request from The Crow’s Nest.
Neither did County Commissioner Ken Welch, a USF St. Petersburg graduate who once raised concerns about the declining number of black students on campus.
And neither did Chris Steinocher, the president and CEO of the St. Petersburg Area Chamber of Commerce. He did not sign the letter, but he repeatedly questioned the need for consolidation and the way Tampa administrators were planning for it.
City Council member Ed Montanari has agreed to an interview this week.
Kriseman said he couldn’t explain the silence of other elected officials, but he speculated that many of them may be unaware of recent developments in consolidation.
One reason may be the Tampa Bay Times, which has not covered those developments in its news columns or addressed them editorially since the retirement of longtime editor of editorials Tim Nickens in May.
Kriseman said he “was not surprised” that Provost Ralph Wilcox mentioned nothing about the dramatic decline in the number of new freshmen in St. Petersburg when he gave his annual enrollment report to the USF Board of Trustees last month.
“You would hope they would live up to their bargain, but that doesn’t seem to be what we are seeing,” Kriseman said. “It’s disappointing.
“Likewise, you would expect the Board of Trustees to do their job and ask questions. This isn’t supposed to be just one campus in one university. There are three.”
The trustees could be the reason, according to Kriseman, for the reluctance demonstrated by Currall to give Regional Chancellor Martin Tadlock the authority to run a full branch campus with its own hiring and budget authority, as prescribed in state law.
“I’m not surprised by the positions he (Currall) has taken because the positions President Genshaft had taken were supported by her board,” Kriseman said. “And this is the same board that hired President Currall.”
Genshaft suggested that both USF St. Petersburg and USF Sarasota-Manatee could be “somewhere in-between” a less prestigious instructional site and a branch campus, even after a state consolidation task force recommended they be full branch campuses as defined by the regional accrediting agency.
“I think he (Currall) came in knowing where the trustees’ heads were,” Kriseman said.
The 2018 letter from the elected officials said that, under consolidation, St. Petersburg should keep the Kate Tiedemann College of Business. It became the Kate Tiedemann School of Business and Finance, fitting the consolidation model that no college deans are in St. Petersburg anymore.
“I’m not surprised,” said Kriseman. “All of this is what we were concerned about. It really kind of neutered the St. Pete campus in so many different ways.”
Kriseman said indications that the Tampa administration would like to have a single budget for the entire university also “shouldn’t come as a surprise” even though state law requires a separate budget for each of the three campuses.
“If it’s all one budget, then there’s no transparency about how little one campus may be getting,” he said.
The budget and the enrollment numbers are crucially linked, Kriseman said.
“Funding is tied to student admissions. When admissions are down, funding is down. And this campus’ revenues are down significantly, as I understand it, because of the loss of admissions.”
Kriseman said it could be time to look back at the letter he signed almost two years ago with the other elected officials to “make sure they are also aware” of the recent issues.
“All of this is what we were concerned about . . . whether it’s taking authority away from Regional Chancellor Tadlock and who reports to him, or the budget, or diversity, or admissions requirements.
“If you start looking at all of these collectively – and that’s the key – it seems like a big deal.”
The Crow’s Nest sought interviews with Jordan Zimmerman, a Fort Lauderdale advertising executive who is chair of the Board of Trustees; trustee Mike Griffin, a Tampa businessman who chaired the consolidation task force; and trustee Stephanie Goforth, a banker who chairs the Campus Advisory Board that helps oversee the St. Petersburg campus.
University spokesperson Adam Freeman responded that “board members will discuss matters related to accreditation and consolidation at the appropriate time during future board meetings.”
Sprowls, the architect of consolidation and incoming speaker of the Florida House of Representatives, has not responded to several interview requests in recent weeks.
And Structural Racism continues ‘bigly’.
This University has a well known racism problem. Someone needs to investigate Tampa Campus Dean of Students Danielle McDonald’s mistreatment of black students. Namely, The largest student club on the Tampa campus .. The Video Game Club, that was run by black students. She destroyed it.
again …gimmy,gimmy,gimmy…again Rick you cowtow to the racism agenda..you gave our city away to it and its really not anything more than politco …again…THE VIDEO GAME CLUB..ARE YOU SERIOUS..so lets sit around and play video games instead of real education…