Senator Will Go To Battle For Eastern ‘If WSU Takes Over, Eastern Is Dead,’ Prince Says

Fri., Dec. 5, 1997

Grayden Jones Staff writer

Two Republican state senators are at odds over a proposal to merge Washington State University and Eastern Washington University.

Sen. Eugene Prince, whose legislative district includes both EWU and WSU, said Thursday he will fight a merger plan floated earlier in the week by a party colleague, Sen. Jim West of Spokane.

“If WSU takes over, Eastern is dead,” said Prince, who lives in the northern Whitman County town of Thornton.

Prince said a merger would increase tuition at EWU and reduce student enrollment. Creating a WSU Cheney branch campus would give WSU power to pick off the best programs and move them to Spokane, he said.

Prince blamed Spokane business leaders and the Joint Center for Higher Education, which promotes higher education programs in Spokane, for putting West up to the merger idea.

The joint center “would like to cannibalize what is left of Eastern in order to help build themselves up,” Prince declared in a statement.

EWU has 6,900 full-time students in Cheney and Spokane.

Terry Novak, executive director of the joint center, denied that his organization was behind the proposal. He said West had alerted him to the plan only one day before the senator went public with the idea.

“We were as flat-footed as everyone else,” Novak said. “It’s simply not true that we had engineered this.”

On Monday, West asked the presidents of both schools to work together on a plan to fold EWU into WSU’s system of branch campuses. West wants the Legislature to act on the presidents’ plan in January.

West said fears about WSU hiking tuition at EWU and moving programs out of Cheney are unfounded.

He believes that by awarding administrative control to WSU, officials could stabilize enrollment at Cheney and eliminate public confusion over multiple university programs in Spokane. The economy also would grow, he says, with a stronger WSU presence, a research university of 19,000 students.

“Eastern has established programs and students; it just doesn’t have a mission,” said West, who represented Cheney before legislative district lines were redrawn. “I want to preserve the campus in Cheney, too, and this (merger) is the way to do it.”

State Rep. Larry Sheahan, a Rosalia Republican who represents the WSU-EWU district, said a merger is unnecessary.

“The ship in Cheney can be righted,” he said, “but it’s going to take a strong commitment to Eastern.”

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Color photo

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