Posted on: Friday, August 3, 2001

Editorial
Dobelle forces UH, state to think big

Newly installed University of Hawai'i President Evan Dobelle has quite appropriately jolted the university and the broader community into focused thinking about the physical future of the university and its activities.

In one fell swoop, Dobelle put on the front burner long-simmering issues ranging from construction of a new campus at West O'ahu, relocation of the John A. Burns Medical School, the puzzle of accommodating growth and change at increasingly hemmed-in Manoa and whether UH needs a football facility to match its baseball stadium and Sheriff Arena.

Not bad for a day's work.

Dobelle clearly relishes the planning, developing and building aspect of the presidency. He has brought fresh thinking to a number of lingering problems that seem to go unresolved year after year.

It is clear that Dobelle's thought about a new major UH facility near Kapolei that might include a West O'ahu campus, a home for the medical school, a biomedical and tropical medicine research park and a new Pac-10 quality football stadium amounts — at this point — to a trial balloon.

He called a news conference to discuss his thinking Wednesday primarily to pull back together the bits and pieces of his ideas that had begun to leak out around town.

A great deal of talk, planning and forward thinking must take place before any of these ideas come close to reality.

But what Dobelle has accomplished is to make it clear that none of these issues or challenges will be resolved simply by sitting there and staring at them. That's not bad for a first step.