If Buffalo News city affairs columnist Donn Esmonde had his way, students living in dormitories on UB’s Amherst campus would be forced to drive or bicycle or take a bus or hike four miles each way whenever they wanted to shop for groceries, go to the laundromat or drugstore, or acquire anything not provided in their classrooms. He’d also like them moved out of the Amherst campus dormitories and into private homes in Buffalo’s University district, so they’d provide tenants for homeowners with apartments for rent and so they'd be near the neighborhood’s bars and shops. That way, the only thing they’d have to drive or bicycle or take a bus or hike four miles each way to would be school.

That, he says, would be really good for the neighborhood. He's probably right. It would be lousy for the students, but they don’t seem to figure anywhere in his urban revitalization plans.

Esmonde blames recently-retired UB president William Greiner for the fact that all of UB’s departments other than health sciences and architecture are now located on the Amherst campus. "We know what Greiner's legacy is," he writes ("Waiting for UB on Main Street, Buffalo News, 7 June 2004). ‘It's partly the institutionalized isolation of UB's North Campus — and a pullback from the South Campus and its neighborhood."

That’s Donn Esmonde making things up. None of it is true.

First, there hasn't been any UB pullback from the South Campus. The place is full. It's not doing the same thing it was doing back in the 1960s (who or what in Buffalo is?). It's now Health Sciences and Architecture and Planning; back then it was everything but Law and the several departments temporarily parked in a rented office complex on Ridge Lea because there was no office or teaching space for them on the Main Street campus.

Second, and more important, Bill Greiner had nothing to do with locating UB's second campus in Amherst, or with shifting to the Amherst campus departments that in years past had been located on the Main street campus or on Ridge Lea. That choice was made in the early or mid-1960s, when Martin Meyerson was president. It’s doubtful that Meyerson had any choice in the matter either. He has maintained a discreet silence about it over the years, but people who know about such things say he just made the best of a choice that was good for some local bankers and landowners, but perhaps not so good for UB, and surely a disaster for the city of Buffalo. Greiner was the third occupant of the president’s office on the fifth floor of Capen Hall on the Amherst campus; Robert Ketter and Steven Sample were there for years before he got the job. By the time he moved in, the departments and the students were there. He shouldn’t be faulted for trying to make life more livable for them.

Esmonde praises Canisius College for building student housing right in the city and faults UB for not having made its North Campus students take apartments in the city too. "It comes down to leadership," he writes. "Canisius jumped deeper into Buffalo when Father Vincent Cooke took over. Bill McGuire turned Kaleida's red ink to black."

That's just foolishness. What does Kaleida’s ink have to do with UB? Bill McGuire doesn’t rent any apartments or fill any bars (so far as I know). Esmonde's Canisius riff misses the point. Vincent Cooke did exactly what Bill Greiner did: he put his school’s new dorms within walking distance of where his school’s students were going to be attending classes. His school just happens to be located within the city of Buffalo and Greiner's is out in Amherst.

However good or bad the decision forty years ago to put UB in Amherst rather than on the Bailey golf course, say, or on Buffalo’s waterfront, the university is where it is. Kvetching won’t change it. UB may set up programs or run classes or workshops downtown, but—absent some unlikely development like Warren Buffet buying the whole campus and giving us enough money to start the entire process anew—the undergraduate college and the bulk of the non-medical school work will continue to be in Amherst. That’s not a choice that was made by anyone presently at UB and it isn’t reversible by anyone presently at UB. Flogging the university and its officials for decisions made by politicians and bankers in another century is like kicking the cat for something the long-dead dog did. It may make you feel better but basically it's pointless. And it's not good for the cat.

Esmonde’s attack is in the service of people with property to rent and bars to fill. That’s not UB’s job. UB has responsibilities and problems enough without being flunked for not having done urban renewal for a badly-managed city in economic free-fall.