March 29, 2024

How 70 People Axed the University of Maryland

Re-posted from Once A Reporter, Always A Reporter

There is great satisfaction in being right, let alone among the first to be so. In this case, it begins while riding home, shell-shocked, election night not three months past. Saying, “We’ve lost the University of Maryland.”

A dramatic thing to say at the time. Now borne out by the state budget. So it becomes a cautionary tale, although it is also a celebration of the power of a single vote.

To catch you up, cutting miles of copy into inches, here it is:

A bricks-and-mortar classroom owned by the University of Maryland and sited at Southern Maryland Higher Education Center is the way to lessen the local economy’s dependence upon the Naval Air Station. Studies and statistics commissioned, read, and discussed among civilians and military officials for a decade support  this. There are details enough to choke a hippo supporting this community decision to go after that classroom building.

It wasn’t a backroom deal. It was a lot of sausage making among a large array of interests working for this outcome for a long, long time. The process was tedious, pedantic, frustrating, glacial, and, finally, successful. Construction funds were secured for this year.

Those sausage makers lost the election. Not even two weeks passed for the affectionately named “Building 3″ to drop out of the all-new Maryland General Assembly’s budget. Just like that.

Can you hear Toots & the Maytals singing it?  “Just like That” is about the deep sadness of desertion. The prevailing line, “You are walking out of my room, just like that.”

That’s it exactly. A much longed for dream, achieved and lost, in the blink of an eye, snap of your fingers. “You are walking out of my room, just like that.”

Just as if all that went before was nothing.

It wasn’t nothing. It was hard fought. It is a core need of this community’s. It is being dismissed because 69 out of more than 10,000 votes tossed out the man in the driver’s seat.

This isn’t, actually, about that part of it. Though that is pretty huge, and worthy of discussion another day.

Much more immediate is this: Not only is no one in place to catch this opportunity for Southern Maryland, there is no one in place who wants to catch this opportunity for us. They are walking out of our room, just like that.

Winning an election is not a mandate to overturn the prior work of your community, but a vote of confidence that you can respect and direct state efforts toward reaching your community’s goals. Not your goals. Your community’s goals. That’s how it works. Just like that.

Comments
2 Responses to “How 70 People Axed the University of Maryland”
  1. Anonymous says:

    It’s very hard to understand how we let this happen.

  2. AnonymousII says:

    Mr. Bohanon forgot that non-military citizens vote. Ever try to get him to respond per a non-military-connected constituent concern? Even when he is working for Mr. Hoyer? Mr. Bohanon always seemed to know more than the average citizen…and those he associates/ed with speak to his being better than us.

    If John really wanted to help the people in St Mary’s, why doesn’t he try to get a firing range for the non-military to practice with the guns purchased before the law tightened. Oh, didn’t he vote for the gun restrictions? Just like the people in Montgomery County?

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