Commentary
Dobelle is shaking up a university that needs it

By John Griffin
Former Advertiser Editorial Editor

Whatever else amid the events that beset us, the University of Hawai'i seems far more interesting, essential and exciting these days.

UH President Evan Dobelle wants to be told when he has a dumb idea. That's something new around here. Advertiser library photo

But much of it is new UH President Evan Dobelle. He arrived in July with a charisma that includes big credentials, energy, refreshingly liberal views and a good quarterback's ability to see the whole field.

Almost five months later, Dobelle gets more mixed reviews. He is beyond his 15 minutes of initial aloha and into a next phase of more critical assessments of his sweeping plans and pronouncements.

State Capitol-watchers report he turned off some legislators at the recent special session by coming on too strong as another slick politician, which is at least something the lawmakers know about. The $1 million face-lift of the president's house went down wrong atop his $400,000-plus salary.

From what I see and hear, he's a lot more popular on campus than was the retiring and retired Ken Mortimer. But you now also get more knowing smiles and eye-rolls when you ask how Dobelle's doing. He seems to have gotten ahead of the regents on occasion.

Still, Evan, as many call him, remains a trade-wind breeze of fresh air amid our doldrums. He even gets criticized for sparking too many ideas. I like his response:

• Universities are supposed to produce ideas and the president should be a community leader.
• If you don't bring challenging ideas out in public, they get killed in private by an entrenched establishment.

So let a thousand flowers bloom, even if some of them turn out to be weeds. Better that than barren ground. Dobelle encourages people to tell him when he has a dumb idea.

In fact, the new UH leader is prominent on many frontiers. Most of the headlines have gone to plans for the new medical school in Kaka'ako and a new West O'ahu campus as part of Kapolei. In addition, there are high hopes on the Big Island and Maui, as well as for expanding the scope of the community colleges (already an undersung UH asset).

Some feel that, given the state's tight finances, Dobelle will be judged most on his ability to raise money here, on the Mainland and maybe in Asia, to finance his big ideas (not to mention his house repairs). If so, he will be more than worth the salary.

But I also think a lot of initial and lasting impressions will be formed by what he does with the Manoa campus, which remains the university's physically rundown flagship for advanced instruction and research.

Information and opinion gatherings are under way under acting Manoa Chancellor Deane Neu-bauer and his planner-lieutenant Karl Kim. They are moving on three related fronts:

• Improving academic affairs to lure more of the best and brightest from Hawai'i and the Mainland.
• Upgrading Manoa's physical environment.
• Bringing more spiritual and cultural life to what has been too much a commuter campus.

One aspect that provides a special challenge for Dobelle is the idea of the Manoa campus being a focal point of a "college town," an old-new neighborhood within the city. This is part of a booming gown-to-town national trend he helped launch.

He's a planning professor as well as president. More important, one of the main reasons he got selected here is his record as president of Trinity College in Hartford, Conn.

He took the upscale Ivy-ish college out from behind its protective iron gates and, with much help from outside grants, made it a vehicle for helping revive what had become a slum neighborhood called Frog Hollow.

Here the challenge is different. Lower Manoa, McCully and Mo'ili'ili are hardly ghettos, except for some ill-planned walkups and high-rises. But there is a need to better integrate UH-Manoa with surrounding community life — to create something more exciting and productive that is greater than the sum of its parts.

Private and public planners offered suggestions about this at a recent UH World Planning Day program where Dobelle spoke and showed a video of the nationally acclaimed Trinity-Hartford projects. (An adjoining story presents some of the planners' ideas.)

But a key ingredient, in Hawai'i like Hartford, has to be cooperation, building a network of community partnerships based on common goals, as Dobelle puts it.

He has shown himself a visionary who can implement, something Hawai'i needs. Now, mindful of his experience at the Legislature, we'll see how home-base Manoa presents him the challenge of getting along with the local folks down the hill.