Clemson’s Crisis Playbook: Emails Expose Coordination on Controversial Development

This seems like one of those situations where the “cover up” is worse than the underlying “scandal” – if that is what we’re calling it. Large universities – all of them – take great interest in the direction of land development that occurs around them. They have master plans that look 10 years and more downstream. They constantly monitor what properties come up on the market via retained real estate agents. If they can’t directly buy land adjacent to their campus footprint, they use their foundations to acquire it, and if that can’t work out, they like to see outside persons and entities acquire it that are friendly to their “master plan” view of campus development. All the big universities allow private student housing developments to run shuttle buses to and from their campus, advertise their available housing, and even allow company reps to attend student functions. They view it as a means to ensure that desirable housing is available to their students. It also seems rather routine that certain student housing developers, or just housing developers in general who are aspiring to tap a university market area would reach out to university officials to try to make friends and allies, so at a minimum they would speak favorably of their projects when they go before zoning commissions – or just not come out against them. In looking at this public relations debacle, it seems to me the only real sin is that they just should have been more transparent about their level of involvement when asked.