A $41 million cut in state funding for the University of Massachusetts Amherst cost 110 employees their jobs and will cost students at least another $750 per semester starting in the spring.

The moves are a part of a complicated system of budget cuts, layoffs and fee increases on campus introduced by Chancellor John V. Lombardi in July. Overall, state funding for the UMass five-campus system was cut more than 18 percent – an $80.5 million cut. The funding on the Amherst campus decreased from $212.5 million to $171.5 million.

Lombardi elected to divide the gap in funding between a series of cuts and the student fee increase. The campus was organized into three basic categories, with cuts to research and teaching – what Lombardi calls the “core purpose” of the University – designated as a last resort. Twenty-one million dollars were made in cuts to organizations and services that the administration did not consider a central part of the University’s purpose.

“The budget process had as its primary goal the protection of teaching and research on this campus,” Lombardi told the Collegian via email. “This is because teaching and research define the quality of every nationally significant public research university like our own.”

The majority of the remaining $21 million cut will be covered by the increase in student fees, which will net the University about $18 million.

Budget cuts made by Lombardi on campus are split between a number of organizations, including over $2.5 million in cuts to the Athletic Department, $1.26 million in cuts to UMass Extension programs, $500,000 in cuts to the Fine Arts Department, and over $7.4 million in cuts to Vice Chancellor positions and salaries.

Most job lay-offs came to employees and technicians in areas such as academic support and the bursar’s office.

“The legislative budget reductions have required the University to greatly reduce the many services it provides its many external constituencies, economize on a number of on-campus support programs, and ask its faculty and staff to take on many additional responsibilities,” Lombardi said.

Jobs cut instead of sports

The UMass Athletic Department announced its plan for budget reductions on July 9, trimming $2.55 million from an $18 million budget with a combination of job lay-offs and reductions. No sports were eliminated by the budget cuts, putting the fears of many to rest. One sport, men’s indoor track, was actually reinstated after a year’s absence.

“The premise behind these reductions is to ensure that the athletic department continues to pursue its primary goal of providing a high quality experience for its student-athletes and achieve competitive success in its intercollegiate programs,” Athletic Director Ian McCaw said in a released statement. “We are fortunate that this strategy does not compromise either of our primary goals.”

Fifteen administrative positions within the athletic department were eliminated as part of the reductions, and each men’s intercollegiate program was asked to reduce its operating budgets by five percent, according to an Athletic Department release. The men’s and women’s swim teams, which already often shared resources, will also be combined to save money.

Several sports were allowed to continue on the condition that they would attain a self-sufficient status. Funding for men’s and women’s skiing will be eliminated, but they are expected to maintain self-sufficiency through NCAA sports sponsorship allocations and private funding.

Men’s indoor track was also reinstated on the condition of self-sufficiency. The Athletic Department indicated in the release that the previous elimination of the indoor program had negative consequences on the outdoor program that could be remedied with the recreation of the indoor team on a self-sufficient level.

To a UMass athletic community afraid of more sports being cut, the plans were surprisingly pleasant to many. David Falvey, a Student Government Association senator and member of the track team, was worried that outdoor track would be cut this year as well.

“My coach and I had a talk. We were playing out scenarios to see who might be cut,” he said.

Falvey said that the decision shows how lucky the campus is to have McCaw and Lombardi making decisions for the campus.

“I’m really happy. We [indoor track] don’t have a budget, but that’s fine with us. We have money from alumni already in our bank account,” he said. “It feels great. Our athletic director has done a great job. When you look at [ex-Athletic Director Robert] Marcum, all they did was hack teams away.”

Track Coach Ken O’Brien also had major concerns about the safety of his sport before the cuts were announced.

“I think there were several of our coaches who had major league concerns,” he said. “I think many of the student athletes were thinking in similar ways.”

O’Brien says that Lombardi and McCaw went out of their way to make decisions most beneficial to students on campus. “They chose to keep the programs that will most directly benefit the students and reach down inside their budgets and find other places to save the money,” he said.

Honors funds restored

Commonwealth College was spared a devastating cut to its budget when state legislators overrode Gov. Mitt Romney’s veto of all state funding for the University’s honors program on July 7. The Massachusetts House of Representatives voted to override the veto with a 143-11 vote.

The $1.72 million veto represented the program’s entire operating budget.

Meredith Lind, director of communication and program development at Commonwealth College, said that many parents and students called the Commonwealth College office looking to see what they could do.

“We recommended that they send messages to their own state legislators and the governor,” she said.

Lind said that the program is looking into finding other sources for funding in the event that a similar cut was made.

“Our development officer is working with alumni for other sources of funding,” she said.

Lind said that another concern for the program is that since its first class came to campus in September 1999, the program has experienced one small budget cut and other than that, they have been level-funded. At the same time, the program continues to grow.

“The level funding is not the [funding] we were looking for to accommodate the growth we wanted,” she said.

Nevertheless, the people involved in the program know they’re fortunate to have funds this year.

“We’re going forward,” Lind said. “We’ve got a good lineup of courses and we have close to 500 freshmen for this year.”

Commonwealth College received a $1 million endowment from the Fleet Corp. in December 2002 in honor of their retiring board chairman, Terrence Murray, and $500,000 in state funding to match.

State Sen. Stanley C. Rosenberg, D-Amherst, said that he was happy to see that state legislators were able to override Romney’s veto. “It was a stupid veto,” he said. “He should have never done it.”

Rosenberg expressed concern that Commonwealth College’s funding has been left separate from the rest of the University’s funding in the state budget – a move that he said makes it a very tempting target.

“I have been for a long time urging that once we have a program established, we should roll it into the base of the budget,” he said.

Rosenberg said that every eight to 10 years, there’s a downturn in the economy and budget cuts are usually made. “The University did not want it rolled in,” he said. “If they ask, I will try [to make it happen].”

Fine Arts hit $500,000

The UMass Fine Arts Center will also cope with a large budget cut this semester, with $500,000 cut in state funding for Fine Arts Center programs.

Director Willie Hill says its hard to tell what the impact of the cuts will be on the Fine Arts Center as of yet, but he understands that plans
need to be made to increase efficiency for its programs.

“We’re looking at every possibility right now to make sure that we’re lean and clean and a well oiled machine,” Hill said.

Budget cuts in the Fine Arts Center will take place gradually. According to Hill, the Center needs the equivalent of 4.75 full-time jobs to balance the budget. The jobs will not all be cut immediately, he said, because the cuts will be put into place gradually over the course of a two or three year period with the aid of bridge money.

“To make sure that we stay afloat and to balance the budget, I asked for about $75,000,” Hill said. The Fine Arts Center will pull from this money rather than having to dip deeply into reserve accounts.

“It gives us the opportunity to reinvent ourselves and come up with additional funding,” he said. “It certainly helped us out a great deal, and I’m thankful for that. It gives us a chance to regroup.”

Hill said that there would be some other changes to the Fine Arts Center, but that he hoped they would not be that noticeable to people on campus and in the area.

“If you reduce personnel, you obviously affect programs,” he said.

Hill said that he can foresee fewer events at the Fine Arts Center, and that some of the events planned on campus would have to be less costly. Bringing an orchestra in from Japan, he noted as an example, costs the Fine Arts Center much more money than it can bring in through ticket sales and other fundraising measures.

Costly events that the Fine Arts Center loses money on will not be eliminated completely from the planned program of events, however.

“We feel that it is very important to bring these entities on campus because the campus deserves it,” he said. “We are still healthy. We will still be productive and we will still give people coming through the doors of the Fine Arts Center a first-rate experience.”

Campus Chronicle eliminated

One organization that was not able to escape budget reductions was the Campus Chronicle. The weekly staff newspaper, which has been in existence since 1985, published its last issue on June 27.

The Chronicle was hit with a reduction of $125,000 initially – a number equivalent to nearly 64 percent of their operating budget for fiscal year 2003. Once the Chronicle announced that they would not publish this year, they were cut an additional $40,000.

The cut of the Campus Chronicle cost three full-time and one part-time employees their jobs, according to Associate Editor Sarah Bucholz. So far, Bulcholz said, only Editor Daniel Fitzgibbons has found a job with the University.

Fitzgibbons was on vacation and could not be reached for comment, Bucholz said. In the last issue of the Chronicle (June 27), however, he told readers that after 17 years at the paper, he felt “as if there’s been a death in the family.” He will be working for the News Office “putting out online campus information,” according to Bucholz.

Bulcholz, one of the other three employees who received lay-off notices, said she had no employment plans as of yet. She also said that she was in no position to predict whether or not the Chronicle, published since 1985 even during summer months, could be reinstated once the financial situation for the state and University got better.

“That’s really going to depend on who’s in charge and how they assess the communication needs of the campus,” she said.

University Press reorganizing

University Press was also hit hard by cuts, with 100 percent of their state funding ($340,000) eliminated from the budget.

Although Bruce Wilcox, director of University Press, said the organization does bring in over $1 million a year in book sales and a number of small grants, the budget cuts reorganization cost five employees out of 13 employed in marketing at University Press their jobs. Two will enroll for early retirement and the other three will look for jobs elsewhere on campus, he said.

“We’re trying to make the best of a difficult situation,” Wilcox said. “People are already working hard, but they’re going to have to work even harder.”

University Press is just one organization on campus that Lombardi made cuts to while promising them “bridge” money as they work towards becoming a self-sufficient program.

“The plan is designed to substantially reduce expenses while allowing us to maintain the quality and integrity of our publishing program,” Wilcox said. “We have contracts with 900 authors… we can’t just walk away from those obligations, they are legal contracts.”

Wilcox said that typically they print about 30 to 40 new titles per year.

Lombardi said the UMass Extension Division, the Fine Arts Center and “many other programs on that list [of programs with reduced funding] have various levels of bridging support provided for a short time.”

The amount of bridge money for each program depends on a number of factors, including the nature of the organization, how closely it is related to teaching and research, and how realistic its plans for a self-sufficient operation are.

Wilcox is grateful for the bridge money. “I think it’s fair to say that the University values the work we do, but these are very difficult times,” he said. “All of us are going to have to find a way to reduce our financial independence on the University.”

UMass Extension overhauled

The $1.26 million cut in funding for UMass Extension services has meant the lay-off of 26 employees and a complete reorganization of the way 4-H works, with a nonprofit organization overseeing 4-H programs statewide.

“We’re trying something very radical and completely unprecedented, but something that will allow 4-H to survive and to thrive in a somewhat different context,” said Wesley Blixt, spokesperson for UMass Extension.

Blixt said that until now, 4-H, one of four programs that UMass Extension runs, has been largely supported by the state. “We’ve been a part of the budget since the late 80s as a part of the demise of county government,” he said.

The nonprofit organization will oversee the entire statewide 4-H Youth and Family Development program in a way that will no longer be “a drain on and at the mercy of state funding,” Blixt said.

Local participants will also be directly affected financially. Blixt said the UMass Extension is in the process of working out an “equitable” fee system to cover costs.

“A lot of what used to be free and state-funded will have to be fee supported,” he said.

Blixt acknowledged that UMass Extension will receive bridging support in the form of a $500,000 transition package to get through this year. He expects $150,000 of that to come from UMass Extension and $100,000 to “hopefully” come from the statewide 4-H program. The last $150,000 will have to be raised through a major donor funding program, he said.

“The outlook is difficult, it’s a challenge,” Blixt said. “We have a lot to do. It’s an unprecedented plan – a lot of it is going to fall on 4-H participants themselves.”

UMass at its limit

Lombardi said that all of the cuts have pushed UMass “to the limit” of what it can absorb without damaging teaching and research programs – a claim that a study by the Center for Public Policy and Higher Education in California bears out, according to the Hampshire Gazette. UMass has both seen its student fees go up more and had bigger financial cuts than any other public university in the nation.

“We are operating at a level that we can sustain for a year or two, but we cannot continue at a level of quality much after that without additional resources,” he said.

Yet he remains optimistic that UMass’ present outlook will improve. “There is no indication that the legislature will force additional budget reduction on the University next year,” he said. “The economy, while not booming, is recovering slowly.

“The Commonwealth’s leadership is keenly aware of the tremendous difficulties the state’s lack of revenue has caused for all those who pro
vide essential services to its citizens, including higher education.”

Rosenberg said the UMass system was cut disproportionately high compared to the rest of the state’s higher education system. While UMass was cut 18 percent system-wide, state and community colleges were cut 13 percent.

“It seems they’re [UMass administrators] doing the best they can under difficult circumstances,” he said.

Rosenberg and at least 13 other state senators are in the process of trying to secure UMass additional funding in the form of a supplemental appropriation for this year – a move that if accomplished, would be unprecedented.

“We have a case because the University was disproportionately cut in comparison to state and local colleges,” he said. “That was just unfair, and we want some of it back.”