He started his career as an elementary-school teacher. He declines bonuses for the sake of the greater good. He was an Owl before he led the Owls. And despite being my father’s age, he is wise enough to reach my generation YouTube-style when addressing
grave matters.

That’s why I’m glad it’s President Frank T. Brogan navigating FAU through eight-figure budget cuts. I just wish he would talk to me like a human being.

I was touched by President Brogan’s effort to directly address the university — students included — via a “special” video message on March 11. But he lost me as soon as he opened his mouth.

As copy desk chief, I am the ranking officer of the UP’s grammar police. I segregate restrictive phrases from nonrestrictive phrases. I terminate run-on sentences. But not even I speak PR.

A link to President Brogan’s video message was sent only to FAU students, faculty and staff, according to Kristine Gobbo, FAU’s assistant vice president of media relations. That the video was intended to be an intra-university message was confirmed by my frustratingly fruitless attempt to relocate the video’s URL by Googling or by searching FAU’s own Web site.

This confirmation, however, meant that President Brogan went from losing me to pissing me off: His PR-speak rendered moot his commendable effort to personally and tech-savvily address the university community regarding budget cuts that affect every member of the community.

At the end of his five-minute video message, I found myself wondering whether President Brogan said much of anything. He emphasizes — and six times uses the phrase — “the future” but fails to define the future he nebulously
speaks of.

Similarly, the organization and budget-cuts-induced reorganization of FAU are a recurring theme despite a failure to cite a single concrete example of what exactly President Brogan means by making tough financial calls “in a way that will see that we’re organized for the future.”

I particularly commend President Brogan’s attempt to directly reach students, because the average student’s knowledge of complicated budget cuts seems sadly limited to what he manages to glean from campus rumors.

However, if President Brogan really wanted to meet students at their level, he would have opted for “casual language … and [gotten] off the PR train,” says Owl TV production coordinator Michael Trimboli.

Furthermore, unless it was more convenient for President Brogan to shoot his video with FAU’s PR-friendly Marketing department, the best way to reach students would have been via students — that is to say, FAU’s student-run Owl TV. The President’s Office has collaborated with Owl TV in the past, according to Trimboli, who has worked for the station for over two years.

But if President Brogan were shooting for grand but unsubstantial language, the Marketing department did right by him.

Besides the quantitative description of the present and pending budget cuts, the 800-word monologue that comprises President Brogan’s “special” video message contains but one concrete statement: $12 million in cuts this year plus an estimated $15 million next year equals “program closure and perhaps even layoff.”

But students have already started to protest program closures, and the President’s Office acknowledged two months ago that layoff is, more accurately, “inevitable.”

Tell me something I don’t know, President Brogan.

To watch President Brogan’s video about the budget cuts, visit:
www.fau.edu/president/inside_fau_1.php.