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Comment by delichon | Hacker News Reader

> He remembers when that building came up, back in 2001, replacing a grove of elm, beech, and oak trees on campus. The old arts center hadn’t been cheap: $17 million was real money at the turn of the millennium.

They tore down a building less than twenty five years old to build a fancier one with fewer actual teaching spaces. There are many "temporary" Quonset huts around here twice that age. This institution is the top recipient of federal research funding. Their fiduciary responsibility with our tax dollars appears to be in name only.

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As the article states, the funds came from an external donor.

It's not how I would choose to use $250M+ of my money, but it appears to have nothing at all to do with federal funding (nor would it even if the building was financed by the school, but especially not in this case).

The federal funds pay for it through the indirect costs funding its maintenance most likely... I suspect that represents a significant portion of the total cost of the building.

Universities are only allowed to include indirect expenses that are related to the research in question, not all expenses incurred by the university (such as a student center, dorm, stadium, etc.).

Well many buildings that are donated have research conducted within them. Not always a lot, but a large building is going to have plenty of uses. Eg stadiums often have medical research that is being conducted within them.

Then that portion of that building could be counted towards indirect costs for that research, and the university is better off than if they had paid for the building as well as paying for the upkeep and those cost savings can be passed along to taxpayers.

Your imagined scenario doesn't apply to this very real example in the article in question though.

More often than not, the building is unnecessary. I'm sure the University s fine having a fancy new building, especially if the upkeep is offset by the American taxpayer.

Good lord, most of you are really, really committed to this narrative. Have fun looking for excuses to be mad.

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