No university wants to have to cut millions of dollars out of its budget. Especially not in the middle of the school year.
That's a no brainer.
It also doesn't inspire much confidence when those cuts come during a dimly forecasted next few years in a state's budget.
Unfortunately, Ball State University has to cut $15.2 million from its budget over the next 17 months, with close to a third of the cut coming before June 30.
But it's going to be mid-March before any ideas are presented to the Board of Trustees. In the meantime, we are all left to speculation about what might be cut.
Randy Howard, vice president of Business Affairs, said numerous possibilities have been mentioned, including monitoring energy efficiency, organizational changes, merging departments and scrutinizing salaries and benefits more closely.
Nothing has been ruled out. Nothing has been ruled in.
Back in December, with no serious ideas jumping out, Ball State administrators opened up a way for students and faculty to submit their ideas at budgplan2010@bsu.edu. Submissions to the e-mail are due Friday.
Taking suggestions is a great idea. But students still need a guarantee that their tuition isn't going to skyrocket, like the recent 32 percent undergraduate tuition hike over the next two years at University of California — Davis that sparked sit-ins and anger in November.
Because a month has passed since Gov. Mitch Daniels announced the cut, and still nothing has really been said.
President Jo Ann Gora stated the immediacy issue as the reason for not gathering a faculty task force, instead leaving the information compiling and idea generation to her cabinet and herself.
Yet, the last formal information from President Gora or her cabinet is a non-prominent letter on the Web site from Dec. 22. If the university is really wanting to open up a forum for public proposals on how to cut this money from the budget, the president's letter and the e-mail for submissions needs to be on the main page of Ball State's Web site right now. They should have been there a long time ago.
Other public Indiana universities facing similar cuts have been slightly more forthcoming with their proposals. Purdue University has specified amounts it plans to cut and Indiana State's president addressed the campus community on Jan. 9 about its plans.
The only thing a continuing lack of communication and openness accomplishes is to perpetuate rumors and fear. There needs to be some reassurance, for faculty, staff and students alike.
Note: This article was originally published Jan. 26, 2010, but a website malfunction deleted it from the archive. It was reposted Dec. 5, 2010.
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