At Friday’s Binghamton University Council meeting, BU President Harvey Stenger asserted that the recent $60 million baseball complex donation includes provisions currently unknown to students, suggesting that another announcement is soon to come.
The discussion at the Feb. 21 meeting came about a week after Stenger’s announcement of the historic donation. The $60 million donation, gifted by an anonymous donor family, seeks to fund the construction of a brand-new baseball complex that would increase seating capacity and provide an indoor training facility for players, among other projects.
However, many students have reacted negatively to the donation, arguing there were other facilities and programs that required more attention, such as improving student mental health resources.
“We’ve been criticized by some people to say that, ‘Gee, we probably should have told this donor we don’t need a baseball complex. We need scholarships, we need more support for student’s mental health and we need other things,’” Stenger said.
In response to criticisms, Stenger said there is more to come from the anonymous donor.
“I have said to people if this family came to me and said ‘I’m going to give you $60 million and I want you to build a baseball complex’ and that was the end of the conversation, I would’ve said no,” Stenger said. “So, the conversation has not ended and there’s a lot more to the story. But, we will wait to tell that at a future date.”
University officials did not respond to requests for comment.