UM Officials mum on Elton John contract

University of Montana officials are bending over backwards to bring Elton John back to Missoula.  Why haven’t we reported on this? Because UM is withholding public information.

Last Thursday, UM President George Dennison and Vice President for Administration and Finance Bob Duringer told the Kaimin UM had agreed to help raise some $75,000 from private donors to contribute to the Elton John AIDS Foundation, an added incentive to bring back the Rocket Man.

Dennison said this may not be an official term of the contract, but rather a verbal agreement between the University and John’s people that the University would work to raise money for the charity from the Missoula community. Duringer reiterated this point, stating that the stipulation is part of a verbal contract between the Adams Center, the president’s office and John’s promoters.

Doubt over John’s return first surfaced soon after his appearance here last October, when Adams Center director Mary Muse received an e-mail from Howard Rose, John’s agent at the Howard Rose Agency.

In the e-mail, Rose expressed serious concerns about UM’s management and execution of the October 2007 concert, but wrote: “We are open to re evaluating a Univ of Montana (sic) concert under the right conditions.”

Rose did not call on the University to raise donations for John’s charity, but we have to ask, in light of Rose’s warning that the April concert could be dropped, how desperate UM was to bag two Elton John appearances in one year?

It’s not that we’re against donating to charity or helping AIDS patients. And Elton John’s music is timeless. But UM should not be devoting its resources just to get a pop star to come back to Missoula. UM should serve the students’ interests, and this fundraising venture is an abhorrent misuse of UM’s time and energy.

We’d like to tell you more about this agreement, but we can’t. Campus officials have claimed Muse is the only one with the authority to release the contract. Even Dennison has deferred all requests for the contract to Muse, something uncharacteristic of UM’s top administrator. Muse has time and again avoided the Kaimin or refused to comment on stories relating to the John concert. The Kaimin learned last Thursday that she would be out of the country until March 3.

Withholding the document from public inspection violates Article II, Section 9 of the Montana Constitution. Mike Meloy, a Helena-based attorney with the Montana Freedom of Information hotline, said in an e-mail to the Kaimin that any written agreement between UM and John’s people is a public document, and its release would not violate any privacy rights.

All this leaves us wondering: Who decided this fundraising effort was a good idea? How hard was John’s agent, Howard Rose, leaning on UM after expressing disappointment about John’s last performance in Missoula? Who will conduct this fundraising? Are donors likely to donate to both UM and to John’s AIDS Foundation, or could this hurt UM’s own fundraising abilities? And why does UM even care if Elton John comes back to Missoula?

We’d like to offer some answers to these questions. But until UM gives up their game of hide -and -seek, thanks to UM’s disregard for openness and a pervasive culture of silence, we can’t.