🚀 go-pugleaf

>The UNIVERSITY bought the equipment.  The UNIVERSITY owns the equipment.  The 
>UNIVERSITY gets to say how the equipment is to be used, who can use it, and 
>what rules these users have to follow.

This is far too extreme a view and naive.

The UNIVERSITY also took money from students in the form of tuition,
and from researchers in the form of overhead and/or direct charges.
That's how they buy and pay for the equipment.

In general, when you take money in a transaction, you lose certain
rights of private ownership. Just like when a landlord rents you an
apartment he can no longer put his friends up there, or even enter the
premises without cause.

If the UNIVERSITY (why are we shouting that word? sounds like the word
of the day at pee-wee's playhouse), or any other organization, wants
complete control of the equipment they are "free" to cease taking
money for its use, indirectly or otherwise.

The university is charged with the administration and dispensation of
resources acquired for particular purposes from general funds. But
that is soas to fulfill their obligations, not as a protector of
private property in the simplistic sense you expound.
-- 
        -Barry Shein

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