President Diacon stated in his recent email that the university would be unable to deploy their “reserve” against this crisis because they would have to sell their investments at a loss to do so. That’s not my definition of a “reserve.” Call it anything you want — an “emergency fund” or a “rainy day” fund or a “reserve” — but the whole purpose of that concept is to be able to deploy it when the rainy day comes. This is the rainy day.

What this tells us is that the way the reserve has been invested is incorrect at best and negligent at worst. Would you put your emergency fund in the stock market? No, of course not. You put it in a safe place so it is always there when you need it. I would not be surprised at all if a few fast-talking hedge fund managers treated the panel that decides how the reserve is invested to a few fancy lunches and they ended up investing all of it in the stock market.

Now, because of this poor decision-making, a lot of the KSU staff are going to lose their jobs and no one seems to think that the panel needs to be held accountable for their decision. I think it needs to be investigated.