Spring Break
Carothers reflects on time at URI during media breakfast
Brenna McCabe
Issue date: 3/31/09 Section: News
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The small room, tucked away in the rear of Enrollment Services, had been transformed for the morning in honor of the 10th URI president for the annual media breakfast.
What stood out the most beneath the cream-colored china and blue cotton napkin settings were the paper placemats, splattered with headlines and news stories regarding Carothers' largest achievements during the past 18 years.
Linda Acciardo, director of communications and marketing at URI, made it clear in her introduction the president was simply "stepping down" in June - not retiring.
Carothers announced later that after taking his first sabbatical in 30 years, the 66-year-old hopes to assume a different post at the university as a professor of leadership studies.
"I know I've been doing this for a while, but I want to take the time to read the literature [on leadership studies] so when I have smart graduate students asking me tough questions, I want to make sure I'm prepared for all that," he teased.
As tradition goes for the annual media breakfast, Carothers tabled the most important university issues of the past year, including large decreases in state funding and financial aid for a suffering middle class, or what he said "was once the meat and potatoes of URI."
"In spite of that, the university has managed to grow. We have quality curriculum and exciting programs," he said. "This really speaks to the grit of URI, its creativity and feisty nature. In this world, you've got to fight."
Carothers admitted there were times during his tenure when his opinions on these subjects were deemed unpopular. He spoke briefly of his controversial move to make URI a dry campus in 1995, noting a time when "families couldn't even bring their kids to Homecoming" because of the university's then-growing reputation for underage drinking.
The dry campus policy is still the subject of heated debate among students and local residents, some who've claimed in the past that the policy pushes the drinking problem "down the line." The URI Student Senate is currently involved in a joint class action lawsuit against the town of Narragansett for its Unruly Gatherings ordinance, which states all houses deemed as public nuisances must bear a notice on their doors for the full length of the academic year. Violators of the ordinance must also pay a fine, and can be subject to additional fines and community service in the case of a repeat offense.
Carothers brought up another "tug of war" currently taking place within the Faculty Senate involving 125 acres of land adjacent to Flagg Road. There are proposals being tossed on the table for housing and a research park in areas where some students conduct environmental research. Carothers said the fate of the land is still unclear, noting there were disputes about whether to leave the land pristine or not.
If the land were to be slated for development, it would follow in the trend of building and rebuilding that spans over Carothers' time as president.
Since he took his post in 1991, the university has built or renovated more than 50 buildings, investing a total of about $700 million in all four of URI's campuses.
"I wanted to build pride in the university," he said. "We had a lot of basketball teams that didn't hurt, but I really wanted to make this a place of Rhode Island to be proud of. Rhode Island's not so good at being proud of things."
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