Reactionaries in the Missouri House have found their strawman to justify cuts to the University of Missouri

Melissa Click is not a sympathetic figure. 

News organizations reporting on the University of Missouri professor who agitated against reporters and police officers during last year’s campus protests usually use still-frame images from videos that make her look deranged.

Her request for “some muscle” to remove a student journalist from covering a protest held on public property made her one of a few caricatures for the many deeply complicated problems at the University of Missouri.

Add to those cartoon characters members of the Missouri House, who today looked to the purse strings to assert their authority over the university.

The Kansas City Star reports that a new House budget bill would cut $8 million from the university’s budget. Specific targets include Click’s salary and budgets for administrators.

The Missouri General Assembly has the responsibility to fund higher education in the state. But too often lawmakers use that responsibility like a cudgel.

Involving themselves in personnel decisions is legislative overreach. If lawmakers have concerns about the university’s performance, it should point to specific outcomes that are lacking. Examples that come to mind include tracking whether students graduating from Missouri find gainful employment in their fields of study. Or freshmen retention rates. Or comparisons to peer universities.

As it stands today, it seems lawmakers govern by rages and outbursts.

If lawmakers want to erode the quality of the MU System’s flagship university, there’s no quicker way to achieve that end than by meddling and retaliating in the university’s affairs. What qualified professor will want to work at an institution where their jobs may be threatened by elected officials? What qualified administrator will want to work where the MU System’s Curators are his or her boss one day and the members of the House Budget Committee the next?

And if lawmakers think that cutting the university’s budget will solely affect administrators at the top and one unpopular professor, then it shows how little they understand about how the university functions.

The ones who will suffer are the students, the recipients of costs passed down to them in the form of higher tuition and fees.