Classroom.

Retreat.

Moneymaker.

The Selu Conservancy has been the first two things. Radford University wants it to be the third one, too.

After years of paying for maintenance of the 376-acre gift to the university, Radford officials have decided they're not going to do that anymore. Selu has to pay its own way. To pick up the slack, they've doubled the fees nonprofits and other organizations -- including Radford University organizations -- pay to use Selu.

Selu director Jeff Armistead announced the new Selu business plan to the Selu Conservancy Steering Committee in April without explaining why it was being enacted.

David Moore, committee chairman, said he thinks the university administration has decided that the money it's been spending on Selu -- keeping the grass cut and the buildings clean, and performing regular maintenance -- could be better spent elsewhere.

"I'm concerned that they simply don't recognize the value of the facility to the campus community or to the community at large," Moore said.

Armistead declined to comment on Tuesday, saying he had to get permission from Radford's university relations office.

John Hachtel, vice president of university relations, said Thursday, "The change in the fee structure is to assist the university in being fiscally responsible in maintaining the facility."

Radford professors and students -- biology, geology, sociology, Appalachian studies, astronomy, art, recreation and other programs -- have used Selu as a giant classroom. The university, as well as civic groups, nonprofits, businesses and governmental, educational and professional groups, have used Selu for team building, strategic planning meetings, receptions and celebrations. Selu has hosted retirement parties, birthday parties and weddings. Local school groups often tour the replica farmstead. Selu has also been part of programs to create quail habitat and restore the American chestnut.

"It was never conceived as even a break-even proposition," Moore said. "It's there as a service to the university and to the community. It has always been that. I'm afraid that the emphasis on making money is going to destroy that concept."

Moore said he's not even convinced the higher fees will bring in more money.

"I'm afraid that what's going to happen is we'll double the rates and serve half the people and then we're not going to be any further ahead than we were before," he said.

Some groups have already told Moore they can't afford the new fees.

"And so," he said, "instead of providing a service to the general public and to the community, we're slowly pricing the use of the facility out of the range of many of the users."

Hachtel said it's his understanding that the new fees are in line with what other facilities in the area are charging. But he didn't know which facilities had been used in the comparison.

Moore retired from Radford University as a vice president. Then he worked 10 years as a part-time employee at Selu. The pay was part time. The work wasn't.

"I didn't spend 10 years of life after my retirement getting it ready just to see it slowly fade away," Moore said. "I don't know if that's going to happen in the future or not. I don't like the direction it's moving right now."

Moore helped create Selu's buildings, in some cases literally with his own hands.

The lodge, an elaborate log structure, provides sleeping quarters and space for meetings. The barnlike building next door hosts meetings and dinners. There are labs in the basement. A pseudo silo houses a telescope. A clapboard house built on the footprint of a house that stood when the conservancy was a tenant farm is a living museum of Depression-era farm life. The conservancy also has trails, a boat dock, a ropes course and space to camp.

John Bowles donated more than 160 acres to the university in 1989. His North Carolina cousins donated nearly 200 adjacent acres a few years later. One of the requirements of the donation was that an overlook be built near a spot above the Little River that was special to Bowles and his father. Called Big John's Laughing Place, the overlook holds some of Bowles' father's ashes.

Selu was named by Marilou Awiakata, a Cherokee-Appalachian author. In the Cherokee tradition, Selu is Grandmother Corn, a life-giving figure of wisdom who brought corn to the people through her death. Selu is also the Cherokee word for the grain and for spirit.

The Selu Conservancy is owned by the Radford University Foundation, which leases the property to the university. The foundation established the Friends of Selu in 1989. The group was intended to be a conduit for fundraising that would develop and maintain the property in line with the conservancy's goals of stewardship education and community service.

According to Moore, Radford's lease on Selu requires that the university maintain the property.

The Bowles were never formally promised that their gift would be cared for by the university, Moore said, "But it was clear that was the understanding when the land was transferred. I'm not in a position to say they wouldn't have made the land transfer if that wasn't the case, but I suspect that if they knew that after a few years the facility would not be maintained -- I'm not saying right now that it won't be, but it seems to be headed in that direction."

The idea of the state-supported university providing services at little or no charge is not revolutionary, Moore pointed out. Students don't pay a fee every time they use a weight room. No one is charged to use the library. Concerts, lectures, art exhibits, all manner of events happen without cost to those who attend them. Many of those are funded, like Selu has been in the past, through outside gifts and grants and university funding.

"The emphasis, it appears to me, to be either you break even or make money out here just like any other business," Moore said of Selu. But Selu is not just another business. "The bottom line, to me, is not the important factor here. I think we can surely afford to support a place like that without expecting it to break even on the bottom line. But the current administration doesn't seem to feel that way."