Donna Shalala cut down an endangered forest for UM scholarships, but won’t say how many
Former University of Miami President Donna Shalala claims that she sold a large tract of South Florida’s most endangered forest habitat to a Walmart developer to fund student scholarships.
However, when I asked Shalala’s Congressional campaign for comment on how many scholarships the school funded from destroying over 20 acres of irreplaceable forest, they declined to comment for this story.
I was unable to find any mention of UM’s scholarship program resulting from the destruction of the endangered pine rocklands forests even after reviewing the President’s reports from 2014, 2015 (here and here) and 2016, and the 28-page glossy book which the school published three days before her departure entitled, “Donna E. Shalala: The Mark of Historic Leadership.”
The University of Miami is still fighting in court against an effort by local residents to get a judge to declare the Walmart permit void, which her school helped obtain before announcing the sale.
“I would not accept a scholarship that was paid for by killing an endangered forest,” says University of Miami biology and environmental sciences graduate Zac Cosner who was a student when Shalala sold the endangered forest, “and I expect that most University of Miami students would not accept such a reward when the price is killing endangered species.”
“The destruction of that forest has diminished the value of my degree at UM.”
Now, Cosner is the Secretary of the Miami Pine Rocklands Coalition, which is supporting local residents challenging Walmarts permit based on the secretive way that it was approved.
Residents claim no written notice of a Walmart plan or of the greater than a dozen zoning variances given out to the developers, who also plan a Chick-Fil-A, an LA Fitness and 900 apartments in the space.
A zoning variance typically involves a hardship that makes the property unable to be developed, which left residents scratching their heads, since the school had talked for years of building a new campus — presumably — for scientific research there, not a big box anchored, mixed-use development.
Donna Shalala’s campaign created a campaign ad bragging about her creation of student scholarships at UM, so I created this parody ad, which uses some of her footage and mixes in video from news and personal appearances on the campaign trail, that tells the real story of the scholarships she created from selling off an endangered forest for a Walmart.
Watch the video here:
