jonetta rose barras: Ignoring the importance of history and neglecting quality education in DC

Sometimes two or more things may seem quite different at first look — and yet they are actually similar at their core or derived from the same kind of thinking. 

Juxtapose, for example, President Donald Trump’s decision in February to fire the nation’s archivist and transfer operation of the U.S. National Archives to Secretary of State Marco Rubio — a political hack who knows nothing about collecting, preserving and presenting centuries of history and culture that represent the American story — with the recent and equally disturbing move by Mayor Muriel Bowser to abandon construction of a new DC State Archives at the University of the District of Columbia. 

Bowser took that action without consulting interested individuals or organizations like the DC Archives Foundation, whose volunteers have invested many hundreds of hours over the past several years to help rescue the District’s historical records from a wholly inadequate facility on Naylor Court NW in the Shaw neighborhood. What’s more, her decision has compromised UDC’s future vitality and burdened the new president, Maurice Edington, with the detritus of mayoral budget machinations. 

Similarly, Trump has upset the stability of various universities in the country, rescinding grants and contracts while making operational demands that have challenged their finances and academic autonomy, among other things. 

Some people may not see a link. It’s understandable that DC residents would want to resist tacking their mayor to the once and present despicable president. 

However, each of them has shown, in my view, a callous disregard for the critical role of universities and the importance of a curated archival mission in our society — present and future.

Bowser’s decision also ignores the wisdom of an oft-quoted African proverb: “Until the lion has his own historian, the tale of the hunt will always glorify the hunter.”

The District may have been around for over 200 years, but the current archives was not established until 1986. 

Who was telling the lion’s story all those prior years?

In this 21st century, DC needs a new, modern archives that captures, preserves and shares its powerful story, told through its government, local leaders and ordinary citizens. It needs a place where researchers and residents can go to learn about their city and themselves — the rise of their community from a haven for slavery; citizens’ struggles through economic oppression; the hard-fought and continuing battle to become true participants in this American republic. 

It is amazing to me that someone who frequently touts her generational connection to the District of Columbia as a “native Washingtonian” would so quickly abandon the opportunity and mechanism to preserve and tell her and her ancestors’ story. Make no mistake: That is what Bowser has done with her wholly inadequate substitute proposal to squeeze a critical archival repository in a downtown facility with a storage area God knows where.

Professional archivists and supporters of a new DC archives unanimously decried her proposed  cuts during a recent public hearing on the mayor’s fiscal year 2026 budget submission for the Office of the Secretary. “The archives building at UDC is a good plan,” Trudy Peterson, a former acting archivist of the United States, told the DC Council’s Committee on Executive Administration and Labor, which is chaired by at-large member Anita Bonds.

In her written testimony, Peterson noted there had been an “evaluation of seven other sites, repeated consultation with the users of the archives and the neighborhood around the site, and a thorough evaluation of what an archives needs.” She indicated that one of the country’s premier architectural firms, Hartman Cox, had already been selected as the designer and Gilbane, a respected construction firm, had been chosen to do the actual building.

The DC State Archives at UDC “will strengthen the reputation of the university as a place for scholarly research, will provide places for interns and for experiential learning, and will bring the public to the campus, enhancing its understanding of the District’s public university,” argued Peterson.

Kimberly Bender, president of the DC Archives Foundation, a nonprofit organization that provides philanthropic support to the DC Archives, said in a statement that the mayor’s decision “puts the most important collection of DC history at significant risk.”

“To fund a half-billion dollar stadium and at the same time eliminate this project as being too expensive is a sad reflection of our city’s values,” added Bender, suggesting what many believe is Bowser’s prime motivation for making adjustments to the project. 

City Administrator Kevin Donahue said during the mayor’s initial budget presentation to the council that cost projections for the archives had climbed significantly, although details of the purported increases were not offered.

That doesn’t necessarily mean that Bender’s assumption is incorrect, however. As part of the deal between the city and the owners group for the Washington Commanders, Bowser committed to providing about $1.1 billion to cover infrastructure and other costs at the site of a new stadium on the RFK campus. The football team would provide $2.7 billion toward the actual stadium construction.

DC is hurting for money. In February, Chief Financial Officer Glen Lee estimated that the District government would face a revenue shortfall of $1.2 billion over the next four years. Bowser had to close that gap in her proposed FY 2026 budget and financial plan.

I have repeatedly written about wasteful spending in DC, much of that from the city’s operating budget. Audits and other reports make clear that there is a need for more efficient and effective use of public money.

Still, I have offered my support for using capital funds for a mixed-use development at the RFK Stadium site. Bowser is right to label it as an engine for economic growth. 

However, a high-quality public university is both the engine and fuel for economic advancement of a community’s residents and the society writ large. Bowser should add UDC and the DC State Archives at UDC to her growth agenda. 

I had hoped to explore that idea with UDC officials. I sent an email early last week to spokesperson Andrea Williams, requesting an interview with UDC President Maurice Edington. My correspondence went unanswered until the next day — after I sent a second email directly to Edington with a copy to his chief of staff, Kelly McMurray Tompkins. Then, Williams called. 

She declined to offer any comment. When I asked whether she intended to answer any of the questions I posed in my email, she said she would reply in writing. She did so later in the week: “We are unable to comment at this time,” Williams wrote.

One high-level UDC administrator, who requested anonymity to speak freely during an extended phone interview, characterized Edington as “the guy with the broom behind the elephants in the parade.”

“Every new president that comes to the university with ideas quickly becomes consumed by a crisis caused by some dysfunctional decision made in the [John A. Wilson Building],” added the administrator.

When Bowser decided initially to locate a new archives at the site of Building 41 on the university’s Connecticut Avenue NW campus, officials were forced to relocate the College of Arts and Sciences, UDC’s cable television studios, the computer technology center, and the Felix E. Grant Jazz Archives, among other offices. 

On June 11, staffers with the jazz archives sent an email to the UDC administration, detailing their disappointment in the mayor’s latest decision and their concerns about the impact. “This facility was intended to house the DC Archives, UDC’s archives and [the] Felix E. Grant Jazz Archives … As DC’s only public institution of higher education, an urban land-grant institution, and an HBCU, UDC’s inclusion in this vision was an exciting step towards preserving and making accessible Washington, DC’s cultural heritage,” the staffers wrote in their correspondence, a copy of which was shared with me.

They drew attention to an existing Memorandum of Understanding that “provided for offsite storage during the development period for selected jazz archives collections at the Washington Research Library Consortium … with moving and storage expenses covered by the Office of Public Records.” There are more than 1,800 boxes in storage, with additional inventory slated for moving.

The staffers said that their “deep concern now is the lack of conversation about a future home for the jazz archives. This is particularly troubling given the mayor’s indication that UDC has proposed building student housing on the site without any mention of the jazz archives’ status.”

“We used to have a major radio station. That was sold in another of the city’s financial crises,” the UDC administrator pointed out. “Now with an unfinished archives, the university has physical blight on its campus.

“How should we fund our institution of higher education so it can thrive — not just survive?” the administrator asked.

How, indeed?

Bowser has proposed more than $2 billion to operate DC’s traditional and charter public schools for FY 2026. For that same year, however, support for UDC appears to be a paltry $99 million. It is the only university in the city to which DC residents are guaranteed admission, and yet District officials consistently provide grants and other resources to private universities, while UDC goes around with cup in hand.

When the mayor announced her decision essentially defunding the new archives at UDC, she indicated the “front-facing” portion of the project would relocate to the Charles Sumner School Museum and Archives  — a site currently dedicated to preserving the history of public education in the District. This postage-stamp sized facility at 17th and M streets NW is already bursting at the seams. 

“What a dumb idea,” I declared to those seated near me at the budget presentation. Not only was Bowser comfortable destabilizing a valuable educational institution and jeopardizing the District’s valuable archival materials, but she was also prepared to endanger the DC Public Schools’ own historical documents, dating back, in some instances, to 1804. 

Bowser’s proposed capital budget includes a paltry $38 million for the archives project, including $4.9 million for the Sumner School and $23 million for a new storage facility for materials not on display. Is that really feasible? And where’s the detailed explanation on how to fulfill the goals of a project originally budgeted for $100 million at such a reduced cost?

During his testimony before the council’s Committee on Executive Administration and Labor, Carl Bergman, of Friends of the DC Archives, asked other pertinent questions: Why, for example, does the mayor’s 2025 supplemental capital budget target UDC for such a disproportionate share of the cuts?

“The supplement takes $182.4 million from 87 different projects and adds it to 27 others,” said Bergman. 

“The proposal targets UDC for almost half of the cuts. The plan takes $89.3 million of its $182.4 million from UDC,” he continued. “Not only does it end the Archives at UDC, but it also ends $33 million for UDC’s Community College.”

Bill Rice, a longtime advocate for a new DC archives whose testimony before the council was supported by the Committee of 100 on the Federal City, called Bowser’s Sumner plan “unworkable.”

“It reduces the city’s archives to the status of a reading room (at best) with no space for the professional activities necessary for archival and records management, and it sends the signal that the DC government is uninterested in its history and records management,” added Rice.

If education is really a priority for the District, then Bowser — who says it is — and Council Chair Phil Mendelson — who says it is — need to put action to their talk. Officials should follow the recommendation of archivists and other experts: Restore funds to the capital budget to keep construction of the DC State Archives at UDC on track. 

I would suggest that District officials consider creating a dedicated revenue stream from some of the taxes earned at the Commanders’ sports and entertainment site. Those funds would start flowing in 2030 — upon the opening of the football stadium — and could be targeted exclusively for maintenance of the new archives and for physical improvements and expansion of the University of the District of Columbia, a place where the city’s youth can continue their education and eventually grow their community.

jonetta rose barras is an author and DC-based freelance journalist, covering national and local issues. She can be reached at thebarrasreport@gmail.com.

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