Decision decried by many as wrong move for a public university that’s hiked tuition, faced budget cuts
Arizona State University’s $500,000 payment to the Clinton Foundation to host a three-day educational conference on its campus has prompted a wave of criticism, with many – from students to residents – calling it a huge and foolish waste of money.
“The school complains about budget cuts,” ASU student Jacquelyn Binsfed told The College Fix in an email, “but there is so much waste.”
Much of the criticism heaped on the public university for hosting the event, the Clinton Global Initiative University, has centered on the fact that Arizona State has nearly doubled its tuition over the last decade, yet still managed to find a half-million dollars for a gathering that drew only 200 ASU students.
“ASU acts as if the expense should be no big deal because it claims the money didn’t come out of its pot of state funding,” noted Arizona Republic columnist Laurie Roberts. “It really doesn’t matter if state funds were used to boost the Clintons’ bottom line.”
“Surely, the funds that were used could have been put to better use … Like, maybe, providing scholarships to students who can’t afford college without taking on loans that burden them with heavy debt upon graduation.”
Richard Moorhead, president of the ASU College Republicans, agrees the conference’s expense was a price too high.
“I can understand the benefit that bringing high-profile speakers like a former president can provide the university,” Moorhead told The College Fix in an email. “But no three-day event is worth half a million dollars. I know many ways in which the money could have been spent to advance genuine education, such as scholarships.”
Other politically involved students in Arizona have chastised the exorbitant spending as foolish and wasteful in a time of penny-pinching for the state’s public universities, which have faced steep budget cuts in recent years.
“Such wasteful spending doesn’t exactly show that ASU deserves more taxpayer funding than it already receives,” Zoey Kotzambasis, chairman of the Arizona Federation of College Republicans, told The College Fix in an email.
And the editorial board of the Arizona Republic flat out called the event a clear display of favoritism and a political boost to the leading Democratic 2016 presidential candidate in a recent editorial headlined: “ASU forking over $500,000 to the Clintons was foolish.”
“Cast against Hillary Clinton’s much-anticipated declaration of her run for president, the event at ASU constituted a rare political two-fer for Hillary: a sensational, media-friendly event for which the soon-to-be candidate was paid,” the Republic stated.
“See Bill and Hill being feted as rock stars! Hear them exhort college students to be ‘agents of change’! Whatever the benefits for the students may have been, the CGI University event at ASU in March 2014 also constituted a coming-out party for the Democrat. Phoenix Mayor Greg Stanton, a Democrat, chimed in at the time with the political message the Clintons clearly hoped to send: ‘I can say definitively that after this weekend, Phoenix is Clinton country.’”
The three-day event, the Clinton Global Initiative University, took place in 2014. Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton all headlined the three-day meeting, which encourages student attendees to pledge themselves to causes such as education, climate change, human rights, poverty, and public health, the initiative’s website states.
But in late April it came to light that the university paid $500,000 to host the conference, prompting a wave of critical reporting on the issue.
In defense, a campus spokesman called it an investment in an “educational and promotional opportunity.” More recently, on June 1, ASU President Michael Crow responded to the criticism by penning an op-ed in the Arizona Republic that defended the event as a “marketing expense.”
“It was money well spent,” Crow argued. “The fee had nothing to do with her or any of her now-defined political ambitions. Nothing.”
College Fix reporter Kasey Shores is a student at the University of Arizona.
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