Democratic state Rep. Harold Love Jr. is resisting pressure from Republican state leaders for Tennessee State University to sell properties to bolster the university’s financial standing.
Love, a Nashvillian who holds bachelor’s and doctoral degrees from TSU, wrote a letter to the university community this week discussing TSU’s “challenges” and describing public discussion about the university as “surprising, painful or even inaccurate.” He said the university can “acknowledge past wrongs while also holding ourselves accountable as we work toward a stronger future.”
Love said he will continue a legacy of fighting for TSU, working with university leaders, lawmakers and other stakeholders to stabilize the university’s finances while “pushing back against harmful rhetoric, and holding decision-makers accountable.”
“Let me be clear: this commitment includes opposing the sale of any university-owned properties, including the Avon Williams Campus,” Love said in his letter.
His statement applies to the airport property as well, he said.
Love’s opposition conflicts with the stance of Comptroller Jason Mumpower, who is urging TSU to sell the Avon Williams Campus in downtown Nashville as well as property the university owns at John C. Tune Airport, which he said has a $9 million offer to purchase.
Mumpower, who has criticized former TSU President Glenda Glover’s financial decisions, said Friday the university needs to make “tough choices” because taxpayers can’t continue propping up the university’s operations at a cost of $30 million a month.
“TSU needs to reorient and right-size which means taking advantage of the opportunities they have by either entering into a sale or long-term lease of these underutilized properties,” he said in response to questions from the Tennessee Lookout. “The downtown campus is costing the university money to operate while taking away from the core operations of the TSU main campus.”
Mumpower said the airport property is being used to store junk cars. He also said recently the Avon Williams Campus, which is located on 10th Avenue North, just three blocks from the State Capitol, is not being used properly and surrounded by fencing, even though only a small part of an adjacent parking lot was fenced in, according to a Tennessee Journal report.
The campus, once the focal point of a desegregation lawsuit filed against the state, was built in 1967 to create a University of Tennessee presence in Nashville. TSU professor Rita Sanders Geier filed suit claiming a UT campus would squeeze out TSU and cause discrimination.
Eventually, the historically Black university took over the downtown campus during litigation, and the legislature named it for Avon Williams, one of the attorneys who represented TSU in the case — and a longtime state senator. A court-approved agreement was reached in 2001.
The university offers a variety of programs at the Avon Williams Campus, including distance learning, continuing education, evening and weekend college, a master’s of business administration, urban studies and biological sciences.
Love headed a legislative committee that found the state had shorted TSU by as much as $554 million since its inception, and the legislature followed up by approving $250 million for campus improvement projects. Last year, the federal government found TSU, one of the state’s two land grant institutions, had been shorted by as much as $2.1 billion, leading university supporters to say the state should recoup TSU for decades of lost funding.
State leaders permitted TSU to use about $43 million in campus construction funds and an advance on state funding to make payroll this fall after a dip in enrollment hindered its finances.
Mumpower and members of the State Building Commission, which have held hearings on the matter twice this fall, believe TSU should take up an emergency plan to cut personnel and academic programs with low enrollment.
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The legislature replaced the TSU Board of Trustees earlier this year, and Ronald Johnson took the post as interim president when Glover stepped away June 30. But Johnson resigned last week in an apparent disagreement with the new board over contracts with Glover totaling $1.7 million to serve as a university consultant.
Dwayne Tucker, who left the board to become new interim president, said Johnson signed the contracts without the board’s authorization. The matter is likely to wind up in litigation, TSU officials said.
TSU ran into problems in fall 2022 when it conducted an aggressive scholarship program, using $37 million from a federal grant to fund students as enrollment jumped to more than 8,000. The university’s financial shortfall stems, in part, from increases in daily operating expenses as tuition and fee revenue declined.
TSU failed to sustain the scholarship program, and enrollment dipped to about 6,300 this fall as only 1,000 freshmen opted to attend, putting the university in an even more precarious position.
The former interim president told state officials last month that 114 people were laid off and expenses were cut, saving some $24 million. Yet the university needed a financial boost from the state to continue operations, and another one might be necessary in April or May if TSU can’t meet its $18 million payroll.
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