Same as every year, this is a big slap in the face to those of us who work our asses off to keep the university running and are only given a 1.5% raise becasue "money is tight."

Just raise the room and board on students!!!

I am disgusted and angry. Especially considering that the room and board just went up. For the bonus they could keep the golf course running or a hundred other things.

Sad that senior management and the board of trustees think this is acceptable. There are far more deserving people within the university that make things happen. When you are making above $400,000 with very lucrative perks, is a 25% raise necessary? At the expense of the students? Raises above 5%-10% are the exception now, but Kent State proves once again they are not in touch with reality.

So, room & board for KSU students goes up and he gets a bonus.... just something totally wrong about that and the amount is outrageous. How do they sleep at night?

It would take the average Joe making $25,000 take home per year, about 20 years to make that half million.
How much more burdon will the average Joe tolerate?
Talk about the epidemy of being out of touch with the times.

As much as i agree with my comrades comments about pay inequality, Lefton should be commended for helping to totally transform Kent into a better college town. Not many people have the vision or will to transform areas especially during economic downturns. If your angry about college prices i suggest you write Gov Kasich whose tight budget forces Ohio colleges to charge more.

I have to agree with all of the above statements, however, as a tax-payer in Kent, I am appauled that we are paying more taxes for buildings the City and its Residents have done fine without so far, while at the same time, paying taxes for someone to decide on these plans, paid by taxes paid by us.

It is a cruel punishment that we are taxed without representation, for things we dont ask for, and to pay people to make decisions for us which we disagree with, and at the same time, some of these decisions are making it impossible for some of us to continue to make additional income in this city, like saturating the city with student housing, thus leaving private rentals empty.

I am impressed with the new building activity in Kent, and certainly appreciate the rennovation aspect, but do not agree that it is important enought to use increased tax money to support. If KSU wants to expand, do it like we have to...save up and get loans and pay the loans off through your income base, not on the backs of your neighbors.

Lets rename our town Boston and fill the river with tea!

academia is again proving they're out of touch with reality. toadies and cronies perpetuate their own rewards. i wonder if my company would allow me to set my own goals and bonuses. rewards for unnecessary tear-downs and reconstruction at taxpayer expense shouldn't be a criteria. development of downtown? fortunately lefton had nothing to do with it or it would still be in the development stage in a committee of his sycophants.

Lefton is a disgrace to the campus--he should be a man and turn down the bonus. I now hear room and board is going up too--how are families ever going to afford this increase??? Oh so everything goes up on the USA students but the foreign students get a free ride--should be the opposite. I have seen KSU employees forced to work 2 jobs to support their families as the employees gets poor increases each year. I have NO respect for Lefton!

Great timing once again. Lefton gets 104,000 bonus and announces 4% increase in room and board. Really?? How much money does one jerk need? That brings his yearly pay to around $800,000 when you factor in his mortgage, furniture allowance, carpet allowance etc, etc, etc. what a freaking joke.

Disgraceful. Disgusting! Abhorent. More evidence of a person so horribly out of touch with reality. I pity this guy's staff! Can you imagine the arrogance, the hubris! Every board member should be ashamed and held accountable for this misguided clubby endorsement. Hire a few more underpaid adjuncts. Squeeze more work out of overworked admin. Pity the NTT workload increases. But Lestor gets his. Who else in exec admin gets bonuses? What's bigger picture total compensation in the ivory tower?. Shame shame shame.

With all due respect to the authors of these comments, criticisms of the university's actions (and this action certainly deserves criticism) would be much more compelling without errors in spelling and grammar. "Epidemy." Really? "Appauled." How about complaining about the system that allows people to graduate high school without knowing the difference between 'your' and 'you're'? That aside, no one could argue that times aren't tough. Negotiations with employees have resulted in raises that don't keep up with inflation. The administration never seems to share in the hardship and always see that they get theirs. At the UA we witnessed a freeze on salaries for two years (several years ago and mandated by the State). We also saw administrative salaries increase, some to the tune of 30% and more, before the freeze went into effect. The administration always ensures that they get theirs, first and always. If administrative salaries in the hundreds of thousands of dollars per year is what the market will bear, then that's fair enough and I don't begrudge them this. How about allowing those same market forces to determine salaries for faculty (especically NTT) and the staff and the custodial workers. Without janitorial services the unversity would be unlivable and unworkable in a matter of weeks. If staff didn't show up nothing would ever get done. If faculty and students don't show up, there's no point to a university. If an administrator stays home NO ONE NOTICES.

Lol. I love irony.

It's like a building late afternoon June thunderstorm clapping about making noise, flashing its brilliance-- a linguistic Zeus, a grammatical god of the heavens; then, just as suddenly-- gone, all quiet. The oppressive humidity is temporarily abated as nature rebounds and starts anew, grammatical mistakes, misspellings, and all. So lovely...it smells like correctly conjugated verbs and precise non-dangling prepositional phrases, with all the consonants and vowels in their proper Webster 7th Collegiate Edition order, and not a simile, metaphor, or I-phone in sight.

That Joycean bit of nonsense obtusely parading as satire thus stated, I must say again-- lol.

"With all due respect to the authors of these comments, criticisms of the university's actions (and this action certainly deserves criticism) would be much more compelling without errors in spelling and grammar.”

Ok...?

“That aside, no one could argue that times aren't tough.” Fragment sentence.

“If the administrative salaries of the hundreds of thousands of dollars per year is…”

The verb of a sentence must agree with the subject in number and in person.

Therefore-- “are.”

Or, rewrite as-- an administrative salary in the hundreds of thousands of dollars is…

Especically, or did you mean especially?

unversity, or did you mean university?

Made my coffee and electonic paper much more enjoyable. Again, Thanks.

Anybody want to talk about the $300,000 that the football coach makes? Anybody want to talk again about how much of every student's fees go to support the athletic department? I thought not.

Rah ,Rah, Zis Boom Bah!

Sowhowonthespellinbee?

I find the comments about balancing budgets etc. interesting. Its always easier to claim individual moral superiority. Frankly governments arent like households. If or when a natural disaster wipes out your home and property I shall expect all the angry anti-spenders to forgo federal assistance as it would add to the deficit. They will have to rebuild on their own. Might as well forgo social security and medicare too, both costing us too much. We might as well become like Europe, tighten our belts, and watch unemployment rise to 25%. Im pretty most Americans dont have degrees in economics or polical science, but they do watch fox news.

417k annual salary, 50k housing allowance, 104k bonus, automobile allowance, really? Another reason the college system is a total scam. This man needs to look in the mirror and see if he can honestly tell himself he's earned all of this while others beneath him are struggling and student costs go through the roof.

Don't kid yourselves that this isn't the rich feeding the rich. Those trustees haven't led lives of suffering or struggle either... Meanwhile, Lefton will keep talking cuts, student expenditure raises, and H/R will do their dance about whether they can afford a .5% or 1.5% increase for the staff and faculty that aren't in the ivory tower and whether faculty can have benefits or not without practically going on strike when the next contract rolls around. When students start taking their business elsewhere because of all of the increases and the enrollment drops, then what? Maybe then Lefton and his cronies on the trustee will get a wake up call and have a clue. Oh, but the students have the new downtown... that they can't even afford to patronize.

Why does HE deserve it? He treats students who appear in his "castle" as 2nd class citizens. The only time he is DECENT is when the media are watching. Oh and a BA from Kent does NOT guarantee a job!

KSUstaff: He doesnt deserve it. The KSU staff members do.

He will probably leave KSU in a year or two and Kent residents will be left holding the bag.... the one with the hole in the bottom of it.

how disgusting. repulsive even. this man should be making no more than the lowest paid custodial worker on the campus.