Las Vegas Sun

March 29, 2024

Daily Memo: Education:

Rogers’ memos: Too many of a good thing?

The multimillionaire chancellor of Nevada’s public university system is accustomed to getting what he wants.

The TV mogul has given or pledged about $56 million to the university system over the years. Last summer, his family decided against donating $3 million to the University of Nevada, Reno, after his bosses on the Board of Regents, which governs higher education, criticized his leadership.

These days, though, much to his displeasure, Jim Rogers is facing a problem his generosity can’t solve. Gov. Jim Gibbons has asked the university system to cut 14 percent from its 2009-10 and 2010-11 budgets. Rogers fiercely opposes the cuts, but he can’t tell the state’s chief executive what to do.

So instead, he shares his frustrations with anyone who will listen, railing against the reductions in weekly memos his office e-mails to about 1,500 people, including every state legislator.

He favors using capital letters to highlight important sections and peddles doomsday scenarios: “This higher education system may be so crippled by its lack of funding that it will never, and I mean never, be able to recover,” he wrote in one memo.

But is he effective?

This week, Rogers distributed letters from Assemblyman Morse Arberry, Assembly Speaker Barbara Buckley and Senate Majority Leader Bill Raggio, all saying they found the chancellor’s weekly memos helpful.

Rogers says he’s speaking the truth. But the whiff of apocalypse his messages carry could endow him with a Chicken Little image.

More damaging, some state leaders think the mercurial Rogers could get his messages across with a bit more sophistication.

He opened one memo by accusing Gibbons of attempting to “muzzle” him via the governor’s adviser Monte Miller, who had complained to several regents about Rogers’ writings.

The chancellor’s diatribe inspired the following entry in State Sen. Bob Beer’s blog: “He’s a great cheerleader for higher ed, when he sets his mind to it. But when he gets to whining and complaining, he gets old fast.”

Rogers also has a propensity for tossing insults into his notes, which some experts say is a losing strategy.

In July, he wrote that Gibbons and other Nevadans who would not consider raising taxes were people “who care nothing about the state, its future, or anything other than their own pocketbook.”

Joe Valenzano, a UNLV professor whose expertise includes political communication, rhetoric and persuasion, says people become less receptive to counterarguments when they feel they are under attack.

Maybe that’s why Gibbons ignored the chancellor for months before sending him a letter last week affirming their differences. As Miller says, “Why would the governor have a dialogue with a guy who blasts him every two weeks?”

Still, at a time when few others in government have openly questioned Gibbons’ orders, many education advocates welcome Rogers’ aggressive stance.

Jabs at the governor aside, the chancellor’s memos have explained how cuts will hurt colleges and universities, which bring federal and private research dollars to Nevada and produce nurses and other professionals the state needs.

“A lot of people take higher education for granted, state institutions for granted, and they don’t recognize the importance of funding and the association between higher education and community growth and business growth and overall community culture,” Valenzano said. “What these memos really are bringing to the fore is a discussion of these relationships.”

But even he cautioned that Rogers runs the risk of disseminating so much information that “people just get tired of hearing it and turn it off.”

As Regent Ron Knecht said in July, “He just has a torrent of stuff, gushing forth, and he doesn’t recognize the law of diminishing returns. And everyone just says, ‘There he goes again.’ ”

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