In the past, a model for cutting

Bob Dorfman remembers an unusual sight from his time as provost in the early 1990s: Students gathered in front of the Main Administration building, wearing gorilla costumes and donning name tags bearing his name and that of then-university President Brit Kirwan.

Then, as now, the university faced staggering budget cuts: The state decided to slash $45 million from the university in two years, almost 20 percent of its total state funding. And then, as now, students and faculty protective of their departments made their voices heard. Now, 600 people marched to protest the dismissal of Cordell Black from a top diversity post. Then, students used the gorilla outfits and blocked Route 1 in mass protests.

When the dust settled, the university had eliminated seven of its departments — including the department of radio, television and film — and the College of Human Ecology. In comparison, officials today are considering merging a number of departments and making other cuts to academics, including increasing class sizes and not retaining non-tenure-track faculty.

In the current round of budget cuts, some students, faculty and staff have expressed frustration with what they call a lack of inclusiveness and transparency. While emphasizing that the system used to handle budget cuts almost 20 years ago may not apply to today's crisis, former campus leaders said they are proud of the inclusive, open environment they say they fostered two decades ago to handle the cuts.

"I felt at the time that it was a careful, thorough process with a lot of input," said former Assistant Vice President of Academic Affairs David Falk. "We eliminated programs and that's a very hard thing to do. And I think other universities had eliminated programs but with considerably more of a to-do about it ... than what we had."

The first major budget cut of the period came in the summer of 1990. In response, the university instituted furloughs, laid off about 60 employees and cut equipment purchases and building renovations. But more had to be done to prepare for long-term budget reductions.

Early on, Dorfman said, the university decided not to cut across the board for fear of endangering the most essential programs. Dorfman asked each academic dean to develop a plan to cut costs. Provost Nariman Farvardin took a similar approach, asking each dean to plan on cutting one-tenth of their budget.

Working from those plans in the early '90s, the Academic Planning Advisory Committee, a group of faculty, administrators and students who advise the provost, targeted individual programs for cuts. New committees were formed to examine each department and report back to APAC. In total, about 120 faculty members served on these committees — one twelfth of those on the campus.

APAC studied the reports, held open hearings for each department and removed four programs from the chopping block as a result. Dorfman reviewed APAC's recommendations and sent his proposal to the University Senate, where each targeted department was reviewed by the Programs, Curricula and Courses Committee in another series of open hearings.

This time around, the PCC Committee would have to inform the campus community in advance about proposals to eliminate or merge departments, but the senate bylaws do not explicitly require the PCC to hold open hearings.

Throughout the process, keeping the university community involved was a priority, the administrators said. On two occasions, Dorfman published the administration's budget cut plans.

"The administration didn't want to make those decisions unilaterally," Dorfman said. "There are lots of smart people around here, and we needed help to make the right decisions."

During this phase of cuts, students have repeatedly slammed Farvardin for what they see as a lack of transparency. The administration refused to post the university budget online; eventually a Student Government Association legislator finally did so.

Since then, students have complained the budget is unintelligible and administrators must be using other, unpublished documents to plan cuts. A major demand of student protesters is the release of all the university's budget and diversity records. Farvardin said last month he would try to make the information more widely available.

In the early 1990s, as now, it is clear that not everyone felt the cuts were handled properly.

"The idea of not having this discipline as an area of study in this decade is absurd," Gene Weiss, a professor in the department of radio, television and film said at the time.

And Seppo Iso-Ahola, who headed the department of recreation, accused APAC of having an alternate agenda.

"With so many inaccuracies in the report, it indicates to me that APAC is just looking for any excuse to get rid of the department," he said.

Still, Dorfman said most at the university thought the process was fair. The University Senate, which had been allocated several days to discuss the cuts needed just one to pass all of the recommendations. Falk noted each vote was strongly in favor of the cuts.

Each administrator stressed that they would not necessarily recommend the same process be used now.

"I believe strongly in consulting faculty and using the governance structure of the university," said Gerald Miller, who served as chair of the University Senate during the hearings. "But I've been retired for three years ... so I'm not current on everything that's going on at the university."

In many ways, the situation this year is different than it was then, Falk said, making it hard to simply apply the same process.

"Because we are a stronger campus, because we have stronger programs, we are less able to do some of the things that we did then," Falk said.

The cuts were passed in June 1992. Along with radio, television and film and recreation, the university chopped the departments of agriculture and extension education; housing and design; urban studies and planning; industrial, technological and occupational education; and textiles and consumer economics. The restructuring saved the university about $6 million, leaving tens of millions of dollars to be trimmed elsewhere in the university.

"In retrospect, 20 years later, it's a little hard to say that this amount of work provided a great deal of money," Dorfman said. "The payoff was more in morale, giving the idea that we were capable of making hard decisions and implementing them."

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