On Oct. 18, two candidates for the University of Michigan Board of Regents, Paul Brown, a current regent since 2018 seeking re-election, and Amir Makled, a civil rights attorney and University of Michigan-Dearborn graduate, held a meet-and-greet at the Flint Farmers Market. The event was organized to help members of the Flint community and faculty/students at the University of Michigan-Flint better understand the positions of the candidates and field some questions from the audience.
The Board of Regents is a constitutional voting body at the University of Michigan responsible for overseeing funding for all three branches of the university and is responsible for the creation or cutting of programs at the university.
Brown and Makled are each running for one of the two open seats on the U-M Board of Regents. Each position lasts eight years. Voting for this position will take place during the general election on Nov. 3. Other candidates in the running for the open seats include Michael Schostak, Andrew Chadderdon, Kyle Maas and Lena Epstein.
Daniel Birchok, president of the University of Michigan-Flint American Federation of Teachers-American Association of University Professors Local 5671, said that putting this event together was important to building connections in the community and with the Board.
“Our local union, along with a few of the other locals at the UM-Flint campus, have been giving endorsements for these candidates,” Birchock said. “We wanted to make sure that our endorsed candidates got a chance to get out and meet with members of our community. We had done something similar in Ann Arbor, and so we decided to format it in a similar way in Flint.”
Brown said that part of his campaign promise is to keep the Go Blue Guarantee centrally funded at the Ann Arbor campus, and to not push that responsibility off to Dearborn or Flint.
“I think that the Go Blue Guarantee is very important to both the Dearborn and Flint campuses,” Brown said. “We have what’s called the central bank at the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor. I think we need separate lobbying groups and government relations groups to be there fighting for each university’s appropriations.”
Makled said that getting resources distributed among each campus is essential.
“I’ve been to the Flint campus, and there is a huge disparity between them and the Ann Arbor campus. When it comes to the budget, we need to make sure that they are adequately compensating the other campuses,” Makled said.
Makled added that he aims to protect the social sciences and arts divisions at U-M if elected.
“I think that an institution has to have a well-rounded group and that it represents all sorts of areas of study and fields of thought.” Makled said, “We need to figure out, when allocating the budget, where the money is going. We cannot be cutting these programs.”
Brown also highlighted the need for these programs and said that they have to design courses that are going to help attract students to those programs.
“I don’t want any of our campuses to turn into technical colleges. There needs to be appropriate expectations to design courses that are attractive to students and bring them to these programs,” Brown said.
Birchok said that the Flint and Dearborn campuses are sometimes overlooked and that is one of the main reasons they decided to hold this event in Flint.
“We aren’t always front of mind when it comes to assigning resources,” Birchok said. “One of the ways to overcome that is to make sure that the folks who are making high-level decisions are aware of us… and so I think holding this event in Flint is a way to reinforce that.”
Maxwell Loxton is a writer for the Michigan Times he can be reached at mloxton@umich.edu.
