For sale
$6 M buys local university stadium the name of a for profit prison company
By Max J. Castro
MIAMI – In the ultra-globalized, savage capitalism that dominates the planet – and our lives – in the early decades of the twenty-first century, does everything, absolutely everything have a price?
It is not an idle question or a philosophical flight of fancy. An item in the news last week brought the question very close to home in more than one way.
Institutions of higher learning are not intended to be on the selling block. Advancing human knowledge, transmitting the cultural and artistic heritage of thousands of years of civilization to the newest generation, encouraging critical thinking, and, yes, teaching skills necessary to make a living too: these are the things universities are supposed to do, not sell out to the highest bidder. Yet last week we learned just what a measly sum it takes, $6 million, for a university just up the road from Miami to sell the name of its football stadium – and in the process its soul – to a rogue corporation.
The story involves Florida Atlantic University (FAU), a Boca Raton-based state institution, and the GEO Group, a company that makes money, lots of it, by running prisons. Critics have understandably concentrated on the question of what in the world is a university doing lending its good name to help whitewash the image of a company within whose facilities numerous human right violations have allegedly been committed and which has faced charges of corruption.
That question is troubling indeed but it is not the only thing that makes the GEO Group-Florida Atlantic University association so repugnant. GEO Group is able to make enough money to be able to give away a few million for an image makeover by taking advantage of three relatively recent and decidedly disturbing trends in American society, trends that a community of scholars should be in the business of analyzing critically rather than providing advertising for one of its beneficiaries.
The first nefarious trend GEO Group profits from is that toward mass incarceration, particularly of minorities, and usually pursuant to this nation’s insanely punitive penalties for minor drug offenses.
The United States holds more people – more than two million – in jails and prisons than any other country in the world. This democratic, rich country is not only number one in incarceration rate per capita. It leads in the absolute number of prisoners, exceeding even China, a country with five times more people generally considered a repressive state.
By relieving federal and state governments from some of the burden of managing this monster of our own creation, companies like GEO Group enable policymakers to continue this cruel madness without ever having to ask themselves what is so wrong with this picture.
The second trend is the outsourcing of all kinds of state functions to for-profit companies. This development has myriad negative sources and consequences. Among the former is the desire of states under the sway of the “shrink the government” ideology to save money and wash their hands of things of their responsibilities. Like the responsibility to educate, to ensure humane treatment of prisoners, to provide for the general welfare, even to fight wars. One of the adverse consequences of privatization is that it allows the state to grossly overreach, for instance by incarcerating an absurdly large number of people or by waging elective wars.
The third trend is toward the mass incarceration of non-criminal undocumented immigrants, especially in private prisons and often under deplorable conditions. This is a particularly sensitive subject in South Florida, home to millions of immigrants as well as to FAU and to an immigration detention facility GEO Group runs, located in Pompano Beach.
In sum, this decision should have been a no-brainer. Any of these three items should have provided ample reason for FAU president Mary Jane Saunder to say to GEO Group: “Thanks, but no thanks.” Instead, she gladly accepted the transaction. And, even after the dirt about the GEO Group had been exposed, Saunder is still playing the company’s tune, saying in a prepared statement: “This gift is a true representation of The GEO Group’s incredible generosity to FAU and the community it serves.”
The FAU president is definitely tone-deaf. But, unfortunately, to a considerable extent, her statement is a true representation of a pervasive mindset that has come to dominate virtually every institution in the world today. Still, there is resistance, here and everywhere. Already at FAU, there have been protests. And, of all people, the play-by-play announcer for the football team, nicknamed the Owls, has mocked the whole thing, calling the renamed stadium “Owlcatraz.” More seriously, young immigrant activists are circulating a petition calling for cancelling the deal. Should they succeed it will be a small but welcome victory in a much larger struggle being waged all over the world over issues of justice and dignity far more significant than the name of a football stadium.
[Full disclosure: Several years ago I spent a semester teaching a graduate seminar to a small group of students enrolled in an innovative program unique to FAU. I have only fond memories of the bright, funny students in the class, people genuinely interested in thinking critically and learning for its own sake. The administration, from the dean on down, as well as the faculty and staff, treated me very well.
Previously, I had heard FAU mocked by some as standing for Find Another University. That was not at all my experience. The only sour note was when, after the course was over, I learned that a member of the faculty, a fellow Miami Cuban-American who taught in a completely different department, had moved heaven and earth to have me un-hired when she learned I would be coming to Boca. But the university did the right thing here too: they recognized her campaign as based on nothing but ideological zealotry and they ignored her. Still, after earning astronomically high student evaluations, I sometimes wondered whether the university might not have tried hard to find a more permanent place for me had my compatriot not raised such a stink over one semester. But the arms of the hardline exile witch hunters are long, and you can’t blame a university for declining to go out of their way to buy into an unwanted political fight. The bottom line is that I write this column only in sorrow and with not a scintilla of bitterness.]
