Messages

1

Your Turn / Re: Concordia University Texas

« on: April 27, 2023, 11:55:34 AM »

Yes! Most regents of each Concordia are elected at the national convention. An anonymous group of clergy publish a list of “approved candidates” for all synodical offices including all the regents. For all of the recent conventions most candidates listed on that “United List” have been elected. Attempts to subvert the procedure by means of a competing list have failed. You can sense that convention veterans (Dave Benke, PrTim) have simply resigned themselves to the enduring dysfunction.

Hard to believe but true.

Peace,JOHN

Looks like my plans for world dominion have failed.  I didn't make the United List for the Board for International Mission.  Drat!

2

Your Turn / Re: Concordia University Texas

« on: April 25, 2023, 11:56:54 AM »

Also just to note that I refigured the total costs of college and it turns out the Concordias are more competitive than I thought. The real numbers would be more like 17k more expensive over four years than other options, not the 30k I reported upstream.

Sorry to hear that the financial aid wasn't as good as at St. Mary's.  At least $17K more over 4 years ($4,250 / year) is better than $30K ($7,500 / year).

3

Your Turn / Re: Concordia University Texas

« on: April 24, 2023, 01:28:26 PM »

The reality is that we are not going back to the Synod being a major source of college funding and their primary function producing church workers. As much as we would like to do that, the resources just are not there.

I happen to love the ripe mission field in front of me every day when I step into the classroom at Concordia Ann Arbor.  There simply aren't as many people interested in pursuing church work vocations these days (for a multitude of reasons). The demand would be there for our Concordias if they were.  Perhaps we should simply consider that the mission has shifted through the years as a result of numerous factors.  Also, I'm privileged to be unapologetically Lutheran every day.  Lutheran identity is alive and well.

Amen.  Our Concordias are great mission outposts as well as ways to ensure that our kids (both Lutheran and non-Lutheran) stay in the faith amid a general college culture that is extremely hostile to Christian beliefs.

Agreed. I would have no trouble sending my children to a Concordia. My comments about the church politics involved and the nature of the disagreement are not condemnations of our system as such. So far, though, we’ve sent one to Michigan Tech, two to Valpo, and one who will be starting at St. Mary’s in South Bend in August. Three of those four strongly considered CUW given their Wisconsin connection. But the next one is thinking Seward in a few years. The big obstacle is not anything doctrinal; it is cost.

CUWAA has the Luther Promise -- up to $20,000 / year if you have walked into a Lutheran church at some point in your life or like Sauerkraut.**

[**Not wanting to be accused of misrepresenting the university's position, let me clarify that this is hyperbole.]

4

Your Turn / Re: Concordia University Texas

« on: April 24, 2023, 01:10:50 PM »

The reality is that we are not going back to the Synod being a major source of college funding and their primary function producing church workers. As much as we would like to do that, the resources just are not there.

I happen to love the ripe mission field in front of me every day when I step into the classroom at Concordia Ann Arbor.  There simply aren't as many people interested in pursuing church work vocations these days (for a multitude of reasons). The demand would be there for our Concordias if they were.  Perhaps we should simply consider that the mission has shifted through the years as a result of numerous factors.  Also, I'm privileged to be unapologetically Lutheran every day.  Lutheran identity is alive and well.

Amen.  Our Concordias are great mission outposts as well as ways to ensure that our kids (both Lutheran and non-Lutheran) stay in the faith amid a general college culture that is extremely hostile to Christian beliefs.

5

Your Turn / Re: Mifepristone and the Courts

« on: April 22, 2023, 01:58:51 PM »

And when can we expect those concerned about corruption to call for the impeachment of Justice Thomas?

Or, again from the Wall Street Journal's Editorial Board:

The Smearing of Clarence Thomas
The left gins up another phony ethics assault to tarnish the Supreme Court.

The left’s assault on the Supreme Court is continuing, and the latest front is the news that Justice Clarence Thomas has a rich friend who has hosted the Justice on his private plane, his yacht, and his vacation resort. That’s it. That’s the story. Yet this non-bombshell has triggered breathless claims that the Court must be investigated, and that Justice Thomas must resign or be impeached. Those demands give away the real political game here.

***
ProPublica, a left-leaning website, kicked off the fun with a report Thursday that Justice Thomas has a longtime friendship with Harlan Crow, a wealthy Texas real-estate developer. The intrepid reporters roamed far and wide to discover that the Justice has sometimes traveled on Mr. Crow’s “Bombardier Global 5000 jet” and that each summer the Justice and his wife spend a vacation week at Mr. Crow’s place in the Adirondacks.

The piece is loaded with words and phrases intended to convey that this is all somehow disreputable: “superyacht”; “luxury trips”; “exclusive California all-male retreat”; “sprawling ranch”; “private chefs”; “elegant accommodation”; “opulent lodge”; “lavishing the justice with gifts.” And more.

Adjectival overkill is the method of bad polemicists who don’t have much to report. The ProPublica writers suggest that Justice Thomas may have violated ethics rules, and they quote a couple of cherry-picked ethicists to express their dismay.

But it seems clear that the Court’s rules at the time all of this happened did not require that gifts of personal hospitality be disclosed. This includes the private plane trips. ProPublica fails to make clear to readers that the U.S. Judicial Conference recently changed its rules to require more disclosure. The new rules took effect last month.

Justice Thomas would have been obliged to disclose gifts that posed a conflict of interest involving cases that would be heard by the High Court. But there is no evidence that Mr. Crow has had any such business before the Court, and Mr. Crow says he has “never asked about a pending or lower court case.”

The most ProPublica can come up with is that “Crow has deep connections in conservative politics.” Oh dear. One hilarious section reports that a painting at Mr. Crow’s New York resort includes Mr. Crow, Justice Thomas and three friends smoking cigars. One of the friends is Leonard Leo, “the Federalist Society leader regarded as an architect of the Supreme Court’s recent turn to the right,” ProPublica says.

This conspiracy is so secret that it’s hiding in plain sight. Can anyone imagine such a story ever being written about a liberal Justice on the Court?

Justice Thomas said in a Friday statement that “early in my tenure at the court, I sought guidance from my colleagues and others in the judiciary, and was advised that this sort of personal hospitality from close personal friends, who did not have business before the Court, was not reportable.” He added that “these guidelines are now being changed,” as the Judicial Conference announced new guidance. “And, it is, of course, my intent to follow this guidance in the future,” the statement said.

***
None of this will stop the political stampede to portray the Crow-Thomas friendship as a scandal to tarnish the Justice and the current Court. This campaign has been underway with particular ferocity since the Court’s majority shifted during the Trump years toward Justices who have an originalist view of interpreting the law and Constitution.

Justice Thomas is the leading target because his long-held views on the law have found new adherents. As the longest-tenured Justice now on the Court, he has the power to assign writing duties for opinions when he is in the majority but Chief Justice Roberts isn’t.

“Is Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas corrupt? I don’t know,” tweeted Democratic Rep. Ted Lieu. “But his secretive actions absolutely have the appearance of corruption. And he apparently violated the law. For the good of the country, he should resign.” You gotta love the “I don’t know” but he should resign anyway formulation.

The liberal press—pardon the redundancy—has climbed onto its ethical high horse and is demanding “reform” at the Court. “All of this needs robust investigation,” demanded Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse. Senate Judiciary Chairman Dick Durbin dutifully saluted upon Mr. Whitehouse’s order and said his committee “will act” to impose a new “enforceable code of conduct” for the Court.

This ethics talk is really about setting up an apparatus that politicians can then use against the Justices if there is any transgression, however minor or inadvertent. The claims of corruption are intended to smear the conservative Justices and tarnish the Court to tee up case recusals, impeachment or a Court-packing scheme if Democrats get enough Senate votes to break the filibuster.

It’s all ugly politics, but the left is furious it lost control of the Court, and it wants it back by whatever means possible.

6

Your Turn / Re: Mifepristone and the Courts

« on: April 22, 2023, 01:39:53 PM »

And when can we expect those concerned about corruption to call for the impeachment of Justice Thomas?

From the Wall Street Journal:

Justice Clarence Thomas and the Plague of Bad Reporting
The Washington Post and ProPublica commit comically incompetent journalism. But by stirring up animus, they increase the risk of a tragic ending.

ProPublica’s big scoop turned out to be a quarter-teaspoon. In an error-filled report last week, the opinionated news site got one point right: Justice Clarence Thomas didn’t disclose the 2014 sale of his one-third interest in three Savannah, Ga., properties to a company controlled by his friend Harlan Crow. He was legally required to do so. On these pages, in an article published online Sunday, I observed that he may have to amend his financial-disclosure form for that year.

On Monday, “a source close to Thomas” told CNN that the justice would do so. “The source said . . . it was an oversight not to report the real estate transaction. Thomas believed he didn’t have to disclose because he lost money on the deal, according to the source.” It is the justice’s share of the sale price ($1,000 or more), not a profit, that triggers the statutory obligation to report.

How big a deal is it to amend a form after missing a disclosure? Consider these examples, which reader Darin Bartram dug up:

• Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s 2012 disclosure amended her 2011 report, which “inadvertently omitted” the sale of shares in an exchange-traded fund that she had bought earlier the same year. “The Value Code should of [sic] been L and the Gain Code should of [sic] been A,” the amendment says.

• Ginsburg amended her 2017 disclosure to reflect that she had “inadvertently omitted” a gift of an opera costume worth $4,500.

• Justice Stephen Breyer reported in an amended 2018 disclosure that he had “inadvertently omitted” two stock sales by his wife, one in 2006 and one in 2018.

• In February 2022, three days after President Biden nominated her to the Supreme Court, Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson amended her 2020 disclosure to note that in various years between 2011 and 2021 she had “inadvertently omitted” travel reimbursements for two speaking trips, a university teaching salary, four nonprofit board memberships, her husband’s consulting income and a 529 college savings plan. No senator mentioned these omissions at her confirmation hearings.

Apart from Ginsburg’s disappointing grammar, it’s hard to see a scandal here. Justice Thomas’s decision to amend his disclosure is so insignificant that ProPublica, which discovered and hyped the omission, hasn’t bothered to claim vindication or to report the amendment at all. Justin Elliott, a member of the site’s anti-Thomas troika, tweeted the CNN story but didn’t mention the amended disclosure. Instead he touted the revelation that “Harlan Crow is not charging Justice Thomas’ mother rent.”

ProPublica has responded to my article with silence. It has neither acknowledged the errors in its reporting nor claimed that there were any errors in mine. The attitude seems to be that they’re entitled to their own opinion and to their own facts. There has been almost no comment from other so-called mainstream journalists either, and the few criticisms I’ve seen have been insubstantial. An editor at a regional newspaper tweeted: “.@jamestaranto’s conclusion is clear. Thomas ‘may need to file an amended form’ and ‘any failure to disclose was an honest mistake.’ Giving Thomas the benefit of the doubt is not uncovering ‘the truth,’ no matter how many column inches you spend attacking good journalists.”

I would never attack good journalists, if only for fear of harming an endangered species. My contention is that the ProPublica troika’s work is a travesty of journalism, and I am increasingly disinclined to credit them with practicing journalism at all. Instead, they function as political opposition researchers. They follow the facts only far enough to find a plausible complaint that Justice Thomas did something wrong, which they baselessly frame as evidence of corruption, then move on to the next accusation. (They were also less clear than I was in identifying his actual error, palming that opinion off on “four ethics experts.” They identified only two of those so-called experts, both of whom expressed prejudicial views about Thomas. One had a 14-page letter demanding an investigation—replete with factual errors—ready to go the day after the ProPublica piece ran.)

Other media have operated in the same fashion. Mr. Elliott’s tweet referred to CNN’s revelation that “as a part of the negotiated sale price,” Leola Williams, “who was 85 at the time of the deal, was given an occupancy agreement to be able to live in the home for the rest of her life, the source said. She lives rent free but is responsible for paying the property taxes and insurance.” That may explain why Ms. Williams, Justice Thomas and his brother’s heirs agreed to sell the house at a loss. The $133,363 sale price also bought Mr. Crow’s company two nearby empty lots, which it sold to another developer in 2019.

Richard Tofel, a ProPublica founder and former president, thinks it’s a scandal that a white billionaire isn’t demanding rent from an elderly black woman: “Can’t imagine how any reasonable person could distinguish this from Crow giving Thomas cash every month,” Mr. Tofel tweeted. Here’s how: the same way I can distinguish between my mortgage payment and a gift to my bank. In making the former, I am fulfilling an obligation under the agreement that financed the purchase of my home. Further, while the continued use of the Savannah house could be characterized as a payment, it is in kind, not cash, and it goes to Ms. Williams, not Justice Thomas.

Over the weekend a team of four reporters at the Washington Post—Shawn Boburg and Emma Brown, with Jonathan O’Connell and Alice Crites listed as having “contributed”—uncovered another Thomas error. This one is a doozy. According to the 1,240-word story, which appeared on the front page of Monday’s paper, Justice Thomas “for years” has claimed income from a company that “has not existed since 2006.” That firm, Ginger Ltd. Partnership, managed real estate in Nebraska and was founded by his wife, Ginni Thomas, and her relatives. Seventeen years ago it was dissolved and its holdings were transferred to a new entity, Ginger Holdings LLC.

That’s it. The company changed legal form but kept the same name and address. There’s no suggestion that its business has changed or that Justice Thomas failed to disclose any income. “The previously unreported misstatement might be dismissed as a paperwork error,” the Post quartet allow. “But it is among a series of errors and omissions that Thomas has made.” It’s admittedly trivial but fits the pre-established narrative, so the Post runs with it.

The Post quartet cite ProPublica’s contribution to that narrative as if it were established fact: “Thomas failed to report the sale of the three Georgia properties to Crow in 2014, and he also continued to report that he owned a share of those properties as late as 2015, his disclosure forms show. In addition, beginning in 2010, his disclosures described the properties as being located in Liberty County, Ga., even though they were actually located in Chatham County.”

Talk about a series of errors and omissions. As I reported, there was a family property in Liberty County; Justice Thomas disclosed only one property, in Liberty County, in 2010-15; and he never disclosed his part-ownership of the Savannah house where his mother lived—nor was he obligated to, as it wasn’t a rental property and generated no income.

The Post quartet compound ProPublica’s bad reporting by piling on errors of their own: Whereas the troika simply ignored Liberty County, the quartet apparently noticed the reference in Justice Thomas’s 2010-15 disclosures and explained it by simply assuming it was a lie rather than stopping to wonder if ProPublica had missed something. The Post’s story was published before mine, but it has yet to be corrected.

None of this is to deny that the Thomas revelations were newsworthy. They’re the sort of story that deserves a few hundred words on page 4, and that a single competent reporter should be able to handle. That describes an exemplary 1991 piece by the Post’s Ruth Marcus (now a columnist) headlined “Brennan Discloses Gifts From Local Developer.”

Charles E. Smith, a friend of Justice William Brennan, gave Brennan and his wife cash gifts of $20,000 and forgave $60,000 in mortgage principal before Brennan retired, then forgave another $60,000 after he took senior status in 1990.

Brennan told Ms. Marcus that Smith intended the money as “recognition for my public service,” that it “reflected only the affection and generosity of a dear friend,” and that Smith and his companies never had “any matters before the court or that were affected by court decisions”—all of which is also true of Justice Thomas and Mr. Crow.

Ms. Marcus quoted the American Bar Association’s Code of Judicial Conduct, which suggested that it was acceptable for Brennan to accept the gifts, and Stephen Gillers, a “New York University legal ethics expert,” who said: “If it’s a close personal friend and there’s no direct or indirect appearance before the judge, it’s tolerable but not something you want to encourage.”

Mr. Gillers is still at NYU and retains “expert” status at the Post. The quartet quote him: “Any presumption in favor of Thomas’s integrity and commitment to comply with the law is gone. His assurances and promises cannot be trusted. Is there more? What’s the whole story? The nation needs to know.”

Readers can draw their own conclusions about Mr. Gillers. As for the Post, it was a much better newspaper when Ruth Marcus worked there as a reporter.

Our tale so far may seem like a comedy of errors, and I’ll admit I laughed out loud more than once at the hypocrisy and incompetence I discovered as I reported this article. But a tragic ending is possible. Supreme Court justices are in danger of physical as well as political and journalistic attack. Since the May 2022 leak of Justice Samuel Alito’s draft opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, protest mobs have gathered outside his and several colleagues’ homes, and the justices’ security regimen has become tighter and more intrusive.

In the wee hours of June 8, 2022, two weeks before the decision’s release, U.S. marshals guarding Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s house arrested a man carrying a gun and other weapons. A federal grand jury indicted the man for attempted assassination (he has entered a not-guilty plea). According to the law-enforcement affidavit that accompanied the indictment, the defendant told police “that he was upset about the leak” and that he had begun “thinking about how to give his life purpose and decided he would kill the Supreme Court Justice” after finding his address on the internet.

This crime was triggered by an act of journalism, namely Politico’s reporting of the leaked opinion. I wish the opinion hadn’t been published until the end of June, but I can’t fault Politico. Josh Gerstein and Alexander Ward got a genuine, highly newsworthy scoop. They took care to confirm it and to report it truthfully. Their tone was measured; they meant to inform, not inflame. By contrast, the work of ProPublica and today’s Washington Post is reckless with the facts, and a reasonable person could conclude it is intended to stir up animus against Justice Thomas and other disfavored public officials.

The Committee on Financial Disclosures of the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts takes a keen interest in the justices’ safety and privacy. It provides federal judges with a two-page document titled “Security Matters” that reminds them their financial-disclosure report is a public document and instructs them to “avoid over-reporting.”

One of its instructions: “For rental properties, provide only the city (or county) and state in which the property is located. Do not use street addresses, lot numbers, or survey descriptions. You may identify multiple properties as ‘Rental Property #1, Cincinnati, Ohio,’ ‘Rental Property #2, Cincinnati, Ohio.’ ” That’s precisely what Justice Thomas did when he had an ownership interest in rental properties—and the ProPublica troika insinuated he was trying to cover something up.

The committee is also concerned to protect judges’ families: “Do not identify relatives by name or designation such as ‘spouse,’ ‘brother,’ or ‘mother-in-law.’ ”

CNN’s Monday report includes the home address of Justice Thomas’s mother. Sometimes journalists should avoid overreporting, too. As for bad reporting, we should avoid it like the plague it has become.

Mr. Taranto is the Journal’s editorial features editor.

7

Your Turn / Re: Concordia University Texas

« on: April 20, 2023, 12:19:21 PM »

Another factor is how pastors are treated by their congregations? Something that congregations need to consider, does the way they treat their pastor, in compensation, appreciation, respect encourage their youth to consider church work professions. If "roast pastor" is typically on the Sunday dinner menu, why would anyone want to consider joining that menu?

Absolutely.  Unfortunately, it's something that pastors have little control over, while actively encouraging young people into church work is something they can control.

8

Your Turn / Re: Concordia University Texas

« on: April 20, 2023, 11:19:33 AM »

None of our Concordias can keep up with the demand for church workers.  I'm sure there are a number of reasons for this, including the burden of cost and low pay upon graduation, but I think there are other cultural issues at play, as well.  The world has changed.  For example, we know, statistically speaking, that the number of processed Christians has dropped over the years and the number of unaffiliated and those identifying as "none" has risen.  The pool from which we might draw is not nearly as deep or wide.  This impacts all of our Concordias.

We can only train those in church work who desire to be trained in church work.  A couple of good questions for pastors to ask themselves are: a) have I encouraged a young person to go into church work recently?; and b) do I project joy/satisfaction in my calling such that a young person might be inspired to go into church work?

9

Your Turn / Re: Cardinal Stritch University Closing

« on: April 14, 2023, 01:32:46 PM »

On the other hand, the national LCMS convention right there in my hometown might be productive of some fireworks in the area of higher education control, particularly with reference to leadership succession and board elections at the national level which are managers of that control. 

Dave Benke

Recently, Joy Pullman had an article on the Federalist website about CUW/AA. In it, one of the pastors she spoke to said something about the elections at the upcoming convention and his hope that some of those people will be replaced.

All of the people elected at the national convention were recommended by the United List. Is he saying that the UL folks (who've never publicly identified themselves) got it wrong in the past? He doesn't say that, but what other conclusion can one draw?

And just how much influence does a Board of Regents have anyway? I came across this article on the College Fix website. According to it, there's too much woke at CUAA. Are the regents aware? Or is this stuff blown out of proportion?

https://www.thecollegefix.com/lutheran-university-masquerades-as-conservative-pushes-wokeness-whistleblowers/

The College Fix is a hit or miss source. Sometimes it has real news from real sources about real problems with indoctrination and bias against conservatives in academia. Other times it just has a headline, but if you read the story you find out it is a whole lot of nothing. In this case, someone kept taking or moving a pro-police decorated pumpkin. And some athletes felt pressured to be supportive of BLM during the Floyd riots. Big deal.

FWIW, I think I know who the anonymous student is upon whose testimony the "article" was based, and there is more to the story -- but not for a public discussion board.  And yeah -- at heart, it's about a pumpkin.

10

Your Turn / Re: Cardinal Stritch University Closing

« on: April 12, 2023, 03:09:19 PM »

And just how much influence does a Board of Regents have anyway? I came across this article on the College Fix website. According to it, there's too much woke at CUAA. Are the regents aware? Or is this stuff blown out of proportion?

It is incredibly out of proportion.  Mind-blowingly.

11

Your Turn / Re: Jews and God(s)?

« on: April 03, 2023, 01:53:33 PM »

I don’t think anyone is saying that Christ is not new and unique. The value of the OT for us is not that we need to know all about Paul’s former, pre-conversion life in Judaism. The value is that the OT is how salvation history is historical, real, incarnational, concrete. Matthew and Luke include genealogies. David, Moses, Elijah, Noah, Abraham, Adam and Eve— Jesus talks about them, fulfills them. The debt-collector no longer has dominion over one whose debt is paid in full. The resurrection life is a similar promise of a concrete reality. It always comes across like some sort of abstraction to be pondered when people downplay the OT.

I disagree that without the OT the new life in Christ is an abstraction.  The OT perhaps prefigured the issue of Christ and his resurrection.  But it could not deliver on what it is nor on its brand new (not a rehabilitation of an old) effectiveness in believers.  Show me in the OT what hints at what Paul is saying in Galatians 2:19-21. Through law I died to law in order to I might live to God…” “

George, one other thing.  When Paul says in Galatians 2:19-21 that "Through law I died to law in order to I might live to God…”  he does NOT mean that he replaced the OT "gospel" (based on works_) and replaced it with a new way of salvation never found in the OT.  No!  What Paul means is that the proper understanding of the OT as pointing to Christ "put to death" his erroneous reading of the OT as though it taught salvation by works.

Granted, the NT brings us something NEW - but NOT in the sense of it being a "different Gospel" than the OT but in the sense that pictures of the OT which point ahead to the Gospel have replaced with the REALITY to which the pointed:  the incarnate Son of God who sacrificed Himself FOR US.  This is why in Romans ch. 4 Paul can use Abraham and David as examples of what it means to live by faith in Christ!

It's also why right after making the claim in Gal 2:19-21, Paul spends the next 2 chapters (Gal 3-4) arguing for its truth from the OT.

12

Your Turn / Re: Greta Thunberg receives honorary doctorate in THEOLOGY

« on: March 21, 2023, 11:44:50 AM »

One could easily buy any title he/she desires.  Just have a credit card handy.  My dad had a friend whose last name was Tuck and who was an atheist.  He decided to buy an ecclesial title.  Guess which one he went with...

13

Your Turn / Re: Thread for discussion of Russia and Ukraine...

« on: March 03, 2023, 07:15:59 PM »

It can’t be too hard Dr. Yak. when I taught creative writing that William Patterson university, it wasn’t hard to figure out which paragraphs the students plagiarized from somewhere else. The changes and use of language by our mysterious correspondent here make one very suspicious.

Ok. I have no doubt that your experience at William Patterson enables you to figure it out today very easily.

14

Your Turn / Re: Thread for discussion of Russia and Ukrai

« on: March 02, 2023, 08:30:24 PM »

It was written:
It has absolutely nothing to do with my ability to read write or speak the English language which I have no doubt I can do better than you.
I comment:
Let’s take a poll. Chatbot? Russian troll? A 14-year old in Odessa? A bored teen in Peoria? A Romanov wanna be in Liverpool?
Here endeth the flame. I’m out.

I agree that it's one of the above.  Given the fun I've had recently trying to figure out ChatGPt from legitimate student submissions, nothing would surprise me.

15

Your Turn / Re: Valpo President/Board Decide to Sell Art Masterpieces to Pay for Dorm Renovation

« on: February 25, 2023, 01:01:06 PM »

As for #4, I don't think the faculty are in a position to have a relevant opinion. Clearly it is sometimes expedient to sell something that is appreciating in order to buy something that will depreciate. People do it all the time depending on their circumstances. The physical dorn building will certainly depreciate (unless it were convertible to apartments down the road, in which case it will appreciate) but if it works to attract more freshmen to enroll or upperclassmen to stay in student housing, the depreciation will be offset by an income stream, much like machinery on a farm or factory depreciates but more than makes up for it.

Dorms are regularly regarded as income-generating centers and are those things that many fiscally-responsible universities will build (if needed) without securing the entirety of their funding beforehand, unlike, say, a new academic building which would need to be fully funded first.

That varies. When I was assistant to a college president in 1968, there was a firm policy to set room and board at a break-even rate. We also borrowed for building or renovation of academic buildings, with the payments to be provided out of tuition and philanthropy.

Peace,
Michael

Yes, it does vary like many other things in higher education, especially over the course of 55ish years.