Professors respond to impending budget, personnel cuts

For weeks, the state budget cuts that Gov. Bev Perdue has proposed have been stimulating discussions in many areas. The educational component of the budget cuts has been creating controversy on a few campuses in the public universities of the North Carolina system, not excluding ECU.

A recent Board of Governors meeting, in which these budget cuts were proposed and discussed, drew a great amount of attention. To the alarm of several people in attendance, ECU Chancellor Steve Ballard said that he was ready to declare financial exigency.

Financial exigency, in its simplest form, is a state of actual or impending financial crisis in which a university cannot be maintained as it currently stands. Some equate it to bankruptcy for businesses. Shortly after Ballard's announcement, Chancellor Holden Thorp, of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, said that he was not currently planning to declare financial exigency.

There are many factors of financial exigency, including the fact that many faculty and staff members face termination from the university. Currently, ECU's plan is to possibly eliminate 147 positions among the faculty and staff.

The response of many of the faculty members at ECU is negative. The ECU chapter of the American Association of University Professors has been taking action, requesting meetings with Ballard and asking to see the evidence that all measures have been taken to prevent cutting staff and faculty positions, a priority placed at the top of the list in Perdue's plans.

"The administration has not demonstrated that all possible cuts have already been made," said ECU professor and president of the ECU-AAUP Catherine Rigsby. "The lines of communication have been very, very weak. Our main concerns are that we request complete transparency in communication and for the non-personnel budget cuts to be on the table before the laying off of faculty and staff is considered."

In an ECU-AAUP press release, the organization sent a letter voicing their concerns and requesting to meet with the chancellor.

Ballard's response to the ECU-AAUP letter stated, "Academic programs are the last of nine priorities."

The other eight cost cutting priorities before the reduction or elimination of academic programs are administrative reductions, non-academic or non-core functions, cost savings, total costs of education, new revenues, vacant positions, work load policy and academic efficiencies.

Dale Knickerbocker, a professor in the Department of Foreign Languages, is also frustrated with the potential lay-offs.

"Before they began to investigate any other means, the 147 number was already out there," he said, referring to the number of cuts the university plans to make for the 2009-2010 school year.

Ballard has created a committee called the ECU Budget Task Force to discuss and try to find other ways to deal with budget cuts. This committee is similar to committees that were created at UNC-CH and N.C. State.

Professor Zach Robinson, a member of the ECU Budget Task Force, said that one of the main purposes of the committee is to have thorough discussion about different ways to handle the budget cuts with ECU's Board of Trustees, so that the faculty and staff could have a direct impact. However, he doubts the effectiveness of this committee.

"It was made clear at the beginning that this would not happen," he said, referring to early meetings of the ECU Budget Task Force when the chancellor verbally stated that the Board of Trustees, not the task force itself, would make the final decisions.

"The committee is very limited in the depth of suggestions," Robinson said. "There is just no reason for the mass layoffs in this institution. The cuts will have a dramatic impact on faculty and staff and student aspirations."

Another reason for this agitation is the administration's response to faculty suggestions to help avoid a mass layoff. The ECU-AAUP suggested a hiring freeze as something highly important to implement as soon as possible, but this suggestion was put into a "do not consider" pile in one of the ECU Budget Task Force's meetings.

"The administrators' refusal and the chancellor's public refusal to even consider administrator stipends is frustrating," Knickerbocker said. "The university is supposed to be a symbol of leadership and leadership means do not ask those under you to sacrifice what you would not sacrifice yourself."

Professor Purificación Martínez says she's bothered by talk of budget and staff cuts. She said she, along with others in the Department of Foreign Languages, was asked to create a list of professors they would consider hiring first and last. She described this activity as deceiving, saying she felt she was actually asked to rank who she would fire first.

"ECU is an engaged university that sees itself as an economically essential position in Pitt County," said Martinez. "We therefore not only have a responsibility to the students but also to the community. If 147 of us are out of work, we will greatly contribute to the unemployment rate in Pitt County."

Along with the increase in the unemployment rate, Martínez and others are concerned with the poverty level in Pitt County and believe that an increased unemployment level would add to rising unemployment numbers. Pitt County's poverty rate is currently at 22 percent.

Sunday Ajose, another member of the ECU Budget Task Force, says that miscommunication between university officials and university professors on this issue can erupt into disaster, something several of the professors believe has already happened.

"Questions should be directed straight to unit administrators. With people who are not completely informed, rumors are created and there will always be rumors," he said, adding that faculty and staff should take it upon themselves to be informed.

In response to the concerns expressed by ECU's faculty and staff, Ballard said, "I understand. This is a scary time. No one knows what the economy will be like. It's scary for the students, too, and I'm scared as well.

"Right now, there is almost no possibility of vertical cuts, but there is no guarantee. Six months from now, there may have to be vertical cuts," he said, referring to cuts of entire programs, which in this situation would be the cuts of a "low-productivity" department, or one that only graduates a handful of students each year.

For example, the German department may only graduate seven students as compared to the English department that may graduate hundreds of students. In this case, the German degree program would be considered "low-productivity."

Ballard points out that the music therapy program and a small program in education at ECU has already been cut.

"This is the toughest budget time in 40 or 50 years. No one knows when it will end," Ballard said, encouraging the public to look at the Board of Trustees' framework, which is ECU's specific plan to deal with a possibility of cutting at least $25 million over the next two years.

"I am very concerned about my co-workers," said chemistry professor Bill Dawson. "I've been here for 36 years. People worked long and hard for what we have."

Rigsby issued a reminder to the community, students, faculty and staff that the administration needs a "deluge" of feedback. Information about the budget cuts and ECU's proposal can be found on ECU's Web site at www.ecu.edu. More information about the ECU-AAUP can be found at www.ecu-aaup.org.

This writer can be contacted at news@theeastcarolinian.com