Comment by bpt3
14 hours ago
As the article states, the funds came from an external donor.
It's not how I would choose to use $250M+ of my money, but it appears to have nothing at all to do with federal funding (nor would it even if the building was financed by the school, but especially not in this case).
The federal funds pay for it through the indirect costs funding its maintenance most likely... I suspect that represents a significant portion of the total cost of the building.
Universities are only allowed to include indirect expenses that are related to the research in question, not all expenses incurred by the university (such as a student center, dorm, stadium, etc.).