Issue date: 3/30/05 Section: Opinion

The news that Sacramento State was hiring Alexander Gonzalez to help raise funds for campus projects may have sounded redundant to some, since Alexander Gonzalez was already President of Sac State and hopefully well on his way to raising the millions of dollars needed to fund the new RWEC building and other projects related to his Destination 2010 vision.

What soon became clear was that this Alexander Gonzalez was not the president, but his son and namesake Alexander Gonzalez, Jr. The State Hornet reported this week that according to university officials, Gonzalez, Jr. has "worked extensively with institutional funders ... and was very successful raising money." In other words he comes well qualified for the job.

This is important because skeptics are going to raise their eyebrows at the potential for impropriety by hiring the president's son. In a Sacramento Bee story last week, President Gonzalez declined to comment saying, "I have nothing to do with it."

The appearance is that this is the truth, that the university made an independent decision and hired the best person for the job who also happened to be the president's son.

The only issue that one might find with the hiring was the timing of the announcement. Gonzalez was hired on Feb. 18 and the news has only surfaced within the past week. Maybe the Sac State PR team could give us a heads-up next time? At least not wait a month to announce a hire that is very important to the future of Sac State.

Despite the potential for conflicts we need to trust that the search committee who made the decision made an entirely unbiased decision when it came to hiring the younger Gonzalez. The fact is, funding for the RWEC and other projects has been coming in slowly while the cost of construction rises. If he is the best guy for the job, lets let him get started.

He's got to start picking some pockets to the tune of $50 million, give or take a few.

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