And we’re back. For the second day in a row, the All Student Meeting on Budget Priorities is streaming, live on USTREAM, courtesy of Ben Doernberg’ 13. As I write this, WSA President Zachary Malter ’13 is giving an introduction; you can watch him above or on USTREAM.
As Syed noted yesterday, these are some of the hypothetical budget-cutting options that the Task Force is considering:
- Increase faculty teaching load from 4 courses to 5 courses a year
- Replace fifteen tenure-track professors with visiting professors
- Eliminate 13 staff members
- Reduce library acquisition budget by 29%
- Reduce facilities maintenance budget
- Sell faculty/staff and graduate rental units
- Eliminate half of woodframe houses
- Change housing system so that most frosh are n triples and most sophomores are in doubles
- Reduce athletics
- Reduce co-curricular programs
- Raise tuition more rapidly than inflation
- Draw more money from the endowment every year
- Eliminate the no loan policy for students from families making less than $40,000 a year
F0r more detail on any of these, watch the stream.
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reduce athletics sounds like the least harmful to the community at large… everything else seems universally painful. shitty situation.
25% of the student body participates in varsity athletics, even more if you add in club and intramural sports. I think selling woodframes would be less painful (and building a dorm or two to replace them)
Why are none of these points/suggestions addressing fundraising strategies? There is not enough of something, in this case money, so the best solution is to get more of it not start cutting things like the no loan policy for low-income students. That program should be expanded not downsized.
Wesleyan is in the quiet phase of its next capital campaign, aiming to raise $400 million, primarily for the endowment/financial aid. Last year, Wesleyan raised over $60 million, the most it ever had in one year. Fund-raising is going full steam ahead, and in the spring, the campaign will go public. Drawing more from the endowment (as suggested as one of the “options”) is the absolute worst idea because overspending is what got us into this mess in the first place.
I’m working on something about this. If you have significant knowledge of or views pertaining to fundraising at Wes, shoot me an email at staff@wesleying.org.
What kind of fundraising strategies? We have talked to University Relations about this, for the record, but what else is there to do?
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Pretty damning stuff