Senate blasts budget-cutting process

Senate policy director David Liu listens to Francisco Tamayo of the Academic Enrichment Committee during the Senate of College Councils’ last meeting of the spring semester Thursday night.

The Senate of College Councils unanimously passed a resolution in its last meeting of the semester on Thursday, encouraging student input and administrative transparency in the midst of University-wide budget cuts.

Three Senate members authored the resolution a week after the Vietnamese language program was cut. The administration announced the elimination of the program in early April, and Vietnamese classes will no longer be offered beginning in the fall of 2010.

The resolution asked each college and department to seek a representative sample of student input when changing the quality or quantity of academic programs. They also sought to increase student awareness of the budgetary process by making the administration provide an explanation of why the decision was made.

Students were blind-sided by the cuts to the Vietnamese language program, Senate President Chelsea Adler said. It was too late to do anything by the time students found out about it, she said.

“We understand, as a student body, that cuts will be made,” Adler said. “We just ask that our voice will be included in those tough decisions.”

According to the resolution, students and faculty “have been forced to play a reactionary role in the budget-cutting process.” This role is not effective, said Michael Morton, Senate communications director and pre-journalism freshman.

Morton said the resolution will give students a more participatory role in determining which programs will be maintained.

After passing the resolution, the senators will send it to Executive Vice President and Provost Steven Leslie, Executive Vice President and Provost Gretchen Ritter and all of the colleges’ deans within the next week. The provost could not be reached as of press time.

“Senate is really looking forward to furthering the conversations with the administration about the budget cuts,” Morton said. “[The resolution] is a springboard for a conversation that isn’t going to end at the semester. It will continue into next year, especially with the legislative session starting up in January.”

The decreased quality of education because of budget cuts is tragic, Senate policy director David Liu said.

“We hope this legislation will bring students to the table to know what’s happening to our education,” Liu said. “This legislation is not advocating that we’re the decision makers. We’d just like to be at the table where the decision is making made.”