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...recent Town Hall meeting hosted by the Undergraduate Council, FAS Dean Michael D. Smith responded noncommittally to a student’s suggestion that administrators take salary cuts in the spirit of shouldering the burden of deep cutbacks across the University. The Faculty will need to close a $220 million deficit over the next two years, Smith said, but the range of budget cuts announced last week only account for $77 million in savings...
...Additionally, FAS has become overstuffed in recent years with a number of financial administrators, a hiring binge that took place out of a desire to get a better handle on the FAS endowment and gear up for a new capital campaign. With the downturn making these concerns largely irrelevant, the finance staff seems like a logical place to scale back. The newly hired deputies of administrators like Associate Dean for Finance Deena Giancotti and Senior Associate Dean and Director for Development Paul Keenan could likely go, given that FAS operated adequately without them just a few years...
...Perhaps the most significant bloat in FAS has come from Smith’s decision to create a new layer of bureaucracy by hiring a significant amount of support staff for each of the three divisional deans. Even during flush times, many professors questioned this strategy, arguing that large divisional offices would be a waste of precious resources on non-academic staff...
...There is no doubt that there must be layoffs among the administrative staff who support students and faculty, and FAS leaders ought to be applauded for making real reductions. But not all cuts are equal, and FAS should focus on those that have the least impact on students and faculty. A logical way to go about making cuts is to scale back the most recent growth, a principle that would mean reductions in offices like advising, communications, finance, and the divisional deans. While these cuts might not be enough to stave off steps like reducing the shuttle schedule and laying...
...cuts”—ultimately, the responsibility for starting these conversations lies with the administration, not with students. The recent commotion caused by these cuts could have been avoided by soliciting respectful student input before these cuts were finalized. Had it widely publicized its cut proposals beforehand, FAS could have easily refined its plan as holes and concerns were uncovered. We certainly do not believe that student opinion should dictate the university’s budgeting decisions—there is information we do not know and particular circumstances we do not entirely understand. But the administration should...