Update: It’s been pointed out by a number of people that the original email was sent out prior to the breaking of the Bush-Lingle tied administration’s Bob Awana, he of underage prostitutes sex scandal incident. Unfortunately, The Stink doesn’t have the money backed, fact-checking resources of reliable orgs like Aussie owned F0X N3W5. Nor, can it afford editorial grammar police needed for sound paragraph construction, it seems. (Oh, and Michelle Malkin is a self-hating, race-baiting ho. Did we miss anything?)
And now an e-mail message from University of Hawaii Academy of Creative Media Figurehead Chris Lee:
From: Chris Lee
Subject: Hawaii Governer needs your help making right decision…Dear Friend and Supporter of the ACM,
My apologies for the length of this letter — it may be the last one I get to write on behalf of the ACM.
I am currently in Berlin, Germany where I am the Executive Producer of the new Bryan Singer film “Valkyrie” starring Tom Cruise. I have taken a leave of absence from the ACM until the end of October to work on this exciting new project, but I keep in daily touch with faculty and staff back home and remain very much involved as Director of the Academy for Creative Media.Among other summer activities for the ACM, six of our students just went to the Shanghai International Film Festival to screen their latest ACM films and our second Filmmakers Development Lab with the Korean National Film Commission takes place in August (which this year carries a $40,000 prize for the best new writer-director and our the Hollywood and Korean Producers will be visiting Searider Productions in Waianae). And coming this fall, I’ve just secured a new writers’ internship for two ACM students in Los Angeles on the hit television show “Smallville” to complement our second
semester of production internships on “Lost.”As you can see, our national and global reputation continues to keep pace with the talent of our students. It’s only our third year since the Board of Regents approved the ACM, but we now have 270 students (70% originally from Hawaii) taking 32 courses from 9 full time faculty making us the fastest growing new program at the University of Hawaii. The privately funded $200,000 ACM Computer Animation RenderFarm (part of the almost $1.5 million we have raised from alumni, friends, federal grants and foundations) is up and running at Leeward Community College and serving via the internet the ACM Manoa, LCC, Waianae High School and available to every student in every school in the islands.
It’s an example of our system-wide mission and another tool to help achieve our twin goals to empower our students to bring their local stories to the widest possible audience and to build an economic future for our islands that encompasses the global creative marketplace. In short, the ACM is dedicated to fostering a Hawaiian cinema in every sense of the word — whether it be narrative films, documentaries, computer animation, video games, or inter-active digital entertainment. Already our students have written, directed, and produced over 400 short films, animations, and video games that would not exist without the ACM and many are working for local digital firms or have started their own media companies in Hawaii.
This past Monday, I was scouting locations in Aqaba, Jordan for our big battle scene in “Valkyrie” when I received the unfortunate word that Governor Linda Lingle included SB 1922, Relating to Creative Media, in her list of 33 bills that she may veto. SB 1922 is of course the vital bill to secure a future for the ACM that all of you helped to pass this session with students, faculty, parents, community leaders and friends of our ACM ohana writing passionate testimonies in support of legislative passage.
To review, this bill provides both nearly $5 million in programmatic funds (cameras, lighting, sound equipment, software, faculty positions etc) from the legislature and ties these funds to a $5 million renovation of the PBS studio on the Manoa campus to provide a permanent facility for the ACM. That renovation will provide ACM with 40% of the usable space in the new building and a separate entrance for faculty and staff offices, production studios, and, most importantly, a place for our students to gather and collaborate.
In short, it means ACM will finally have a home. It also calls for PBS to cover all of the overhead and maintenance costs such as air conditioning — which as our friends at the med school can tell you, over time costs about as much as building a new facility in the first place.
But this way, we don’t even have to raise the capitol to build a new building and, because these monies are not being diverted from all of the other urgent physical needs on the Manoa campus it doesn’t take anything away from existing programs. It is, in fact, a $10 million investment in the University, our students, and an alternative future of living wage jobs in the global creative economy right here in Hawaii.
It’s a win-win for all concerned which is why I believe it passed both the Senate and the House on a unanimous and bi-partisan basis.
It is somewhat baffling, therefore, that the Governor, who has been a fervent supporter of the ACM and the Innovation Economy from the beginning, may now veto this bill. Even more baffling is the fact that she is being advised to do so by the University of Hawaii itself. This in spite of the fact that during all of the hearings on this bill, both the Lingle administration through the Department of Business Development and Tourism (DBEDT) and the University of Hawaii in written and verbal testimony from President David McClain and former Vice President for Academic Affairs Neal Smastresk and out-going Chancellor Denise Konan, repeatedly favored the passage of this bill.
Officially, the logic behind the threatened veto according to a press release from the Governor’s office is this:
Explanation: This bill appears to violate Section 5 of Article XI of the Hawai’i Constitution by requiring the University of Hawai’i to lease a specific property to a specific private party (PBS) at no cost and on specific terms and conditions. University of Hawai’i autonomy provides the Board of Regents “exclusive jurisdiction over the internal structure, management and operation of the University”. The land on which the PBS Hawai’i facility is located was granted to the University by Executive Order 1807, which provides in pertinent part that “the public land hereinafter described is hereby set aside for the following public purposes: For Educational Purposes, to be under the control and management of the Board of Regents of the University of Hawai’i.” The Bill violates the terms on which the University holds the land by setting aside the authority of the Board of Regents to control and manage the land and substituting the Legislature’s determination of how the land should be used for the Regents.
That’s a long explanation, so let’s take it bit by bit, along with my view of the objections:
1) This bill appears to violate Section 5 of Article XI of the Hawai’i Constitution by requiring the University of Hawai’i to lease a specific property to a specific private party (PBS) at no cost and on
specific terms and conditions. Well, I don’t think having PBS spend $5 million to renovate and cover our on-going maintenance costs in perpetuity is the same as “no cost.” Neither is the chance for ACM to have an actual home on the campus — right now we are “homeless squatters” taking up other people’s offices and have no production facilities. This way we get 40% of a renovated building made for cinema production. All these things cost money, and right now PBS is the only one offering to pay for them.2) University of Hawai’i autonomy provides the Board of Regents “exclusive jurisdiction over the internal structure, management and operation of the University”. The land on which the PBS Hawai’i facility is located was granted to the University by Executive Order 1807, which provides in pertinent part that “the public land hereinafter described is hereby set aside for the following public purposes: For Educational Purposes, to be under the control and management of the Board of Regents of the University of Hawai’i.” No argument there and none intended. Our students and faculty are certainly involved in “educational purposes.” Among our 270 students, I think we have more than 60 majors already going for a BA in Creative Media through Interdisciplinary Studies (someday of course we hope to have our own BA).
3) The Bill violates the terms on which the University holds the land by setting aside the authority of the Board of Regents to control and manage the land and substituting the Legislature’s determination of how the land should be used for the Regents. Actually, I don’t disagree with this premise but I’ll leave the legal definitions to the lawyers. In fact, as you know from my previous letters to our supporters, we were always going to bring this matter to the Board of Regents for their approval if there was something to actually approve. If the BOR wants to reject this $10 million addition to the Manoa campus, I’ll abide by their wisdom because that’s their prerogative — and it was their perogative that got this program started in the first place. But they can’t decide on something that doesn’t actually exist, and without the successful passage and signing of this bill, there is nothing to bring before them.
Having personally gone before the Regents five or six times already, I know that you don’t do anything without them. In fact, you don’t even plan to do anything without them. That’s what makes this University-driven veto so confusing. The history of this proposed partnership between PBS and ACM actually started last August when the Manoa Chancellor’s office asked me to come up with a “programmatic reason” for the University of Hawaii Board of Regents to extend the PBS lease, which subsequently expired in 2006. Now that we have done so, for some reason the University wants that programmatic justification vetoed before the BOR can even vote on it.
PBS, which I think is a fantastic resource for the University (who wouldn’t want an FCC licensed broadcast facility on their campus?), had been trying for over two yars , unsuccessfully I gather, to have their lease extended because, with the coming of digital broadcasting and the aging of their current facility, they needed to know where they were going to be. And ACM needed a home. It certainly seemed like a good fit.
Then, not at my behest or with my knowledge, in January Senate President Colleen Hanabusa introduced a bill to provide funding for a “permanent facility” for the ACM tied to specific financing — not a new capitol campaign or fanciful promises of gifts to come. Guided by Senator Carol Fukunaga and Representative Jerry Chang in the House, that funding eventually came from a partnership with PBS and SB 1922 emerged as one of the few pieces of legislation to make it through every committee hearing
without a single “no” vote.As Founder and Director of what The Honolulu Advertiser once called “this precocious film school,” I have always known that I’d have to figure out some way to pay for the ACM. Right after I was hired to build the “film school,” I was told I could not have any money for it. In fact, I was told I could not even ask for any money for it (meaning, I think, from re-allocation of existing resources). So I went out and raised a fresh $1.5 million from alumni like Roy and Hilda Takeyama and Jay Shidler, local foundations like the Campbell Family Foundation and the Sydney Kosasa Foundation, and friends in Hollywood like director Roland Emmerich and federal grants. And the students and our dedicated faculty have delivered beyond even my most optimistic dreams.
But this is an expensive program. We calculate that we spend “soft dollars” totaling $700 per student per semester in each of our production classes. The students are worth it, but the ACM does not receive a dime in programmatic funds from the University. The salaries of our faculty and staff came directly from budgets proposed by Governor Lingle and approved by the Legislature — not from any UH budget proposal.
And according to our fiscal officer, the ACM is now in the red. Three years of computers and cameras and editing and animation software and RenderFarms and student support for the fastest growing and one of the most locally and globally recognized programs on campus costs a lot of money — money that I don’t see being re-directed from all of the other vital and under-funded programs on the Manoa campus or all of the deferred maintenance of Manoa’s crumbling infrastructure.
Quite simply, I don’t know how this program is going to survive if the University has its way and SB 1922 is vetoed. I just can’t keep asking everyone else to pay for the ACM if the University doesn’t want to accept this $10 million gift or help to pay for it themselves. This is not just about having a permanent facility. This is about having an Academy for Creative Media.
I must share with you how thrilling it is for me to be about to shoot where David Lean filmed some of “Lawrence of Arabia.” I don’t think it’s an accident that I heard about this possible veto right where that movie was made. As any good student of film will tell you, one of the most inspirational moments in the history of cinema is when Lawrence — played by Peter O’Toole — goes into the desert to solve an seemingly unsolvable problem. He does it by thinking out of the box to do the imposssible. And the term he uses to convey his unconventional thinking is one word: “Aqaba.”
ACM has always been built and funded through unconventional thinking. The work of our students has never been done before. And the future our students wrote about in their testimonies that they believe ACM offers them has never been accomplished before.
Even on the other side of the world I’ve heard the coconut wireless bringing rumours of this veto because it “sets a bad precedent” or “violates the constitution.” Maybe so — but I’d prefer the Board of Regents to make that decision, not the Governor who, as I’ve said, has always been a great supporter of our’s.
Please help the ACM one more time by emailing a brief note of support or just re-submitting your previous testimonies addressed to the following:
mailto: governor.lingle@hawaii.gov. Senior staff includes Chief of Staff Bob Awana (mailto:bob.awana@hawaii.gov; 586-0012); Senior Policy Advisor Linda Smith (mailto:linda.smith@hawaii.gov; 586-5330); and Senior Communications Advisor Lenny Klompus (mailto:lenny.klompus@hawaii.gov; 586-7705).
Imua,
Chris
