UAB to medical alumni group: Let's consolidate - Birmingham Business Journal:

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Betty Ruth Speir, immediate past president of the , said the request was a sign of “desperation” and was nothinv more than a power grab attempyt to gain control over medicalalumni MAA’s property on 20th Street South and access to its nationalk alumni database. “They see us as a great threatr and they justwant control,” Speird said. UAB spokeswoman Dale Turnbough said inan e-mail responss that the university’s proposal was not an attempt to take controo over medical alumni fundraising. She said UAB “value s its relationship with all medicapl alumni and continues to work very hard to achievde a positive relationship withMAA leadership.
” The rift betweenj UAB and MAA had been brewing for but escalated in 2008 when the universitu changed the medical school’s name to includee UAB and began restricting accessd to medical students. The MAA openlyy questioned the university’s motives in the name changer and then, on Jan. 23, the officiallyt severed ties with MAA and started its own medicaplalumni group. It stopped paying some of MAA’ws operating expenses, including personnel Current MAA President Theodis Buggs called the consolidatio proposala “total disappointment” in a letter to universituy representatives and in a May 19 lettedr said the association would continue to serve medicalk students and alumni as an independenf entity.
In an April 23 letter to the The MAA woulcd have to agree to cooperate with theuniversitu “at all times” and in “all to facilitate the university’s obligations, accordintg to the affiliation letter which was posted on the MAA’x Web site. It would also have to acknowledge that the schoolk will continue to use the trade name and thatthe school’d graduates since 1969 are UAB alumni. The MAA would have to providre the universitywith “any and all data” relating to alumnki and donors. In a move Speir deemed a “deaol breaker,” the university’s proposed agreemenr would have abolished any MAA including itsexecutive director.
The agreement also wouls have mandated the transfer of allof MAA’sz assets to the universit if they ever split, with the exceptiojn of the 20th Street building, which the MAA has fearef the university has been eyeing. In August 2008, UAB askedf the city of Birmingham to rezonre the alumni building as part of a healtb andinstitutional district, but the requestf was turned down because it was discovered UAB didn’t own the the MAA did.
In a May 19 letter to the Universityt ofAlabama System, Buggs said MAA will continud to have its own employees and be responsible for its banking and accounting Speir said UAB’s proposal is a reflection of its inability to lure medical school alumni and donors away from the MAA. She said medicak school alumni are loyal to the MAA andit doesn’t worru about competing for their contributions. “We’ll remain independent like we’ve been for 40 years,” Speir said. Animositt between the and MAA gradually grew after they agreec to work together inSeptember 2005.
Speir said in February that MAA was coercedc into that agreementby UAB, whom she said pledged to starg a competing fundraising arm for medicak students if they did not merge