By MICHAEL COLLINS
Editor-in-Chief
On Monday Oct. 5 President Janet Cunningham addressed all faculty and staff through email with institutional plans that would effectively “freeze-out” all hiring effective as of Monday’s date.
This action comes as a result of huge projected statewide budget cuts of around $1 billion for the next fiscal year, which would mean cuts in excess of $980,000 for the university.
According to Cunningham, The governing board asks to prepare for scenarios “to deal with a 10 percent cut in state appropriations”.
Associate Vice President for University Relations, Steve Valencia reiterated Cunningham’s message by saying around 40 percent of Northwestern’s budget comes from state appropriations.
“All current and future faculty and staff vacancies will not be advertised or filled unless authorized by the Vice President for Administration. All vacancies will be evaluated at the executive level and only those positions determined critical to fulfilling the mission of the institution will be filled,” said Cunningham within her message.
According to Valencia, enrollment numbers were also considered when making this decision.
“We’ve experienced a small drop in enrollment as we have released earlier this year,” said Valencia. “60 percent of our remaining budget comes from tuition and fees, so this drop was also a factor in our decision.”
According to Cunningham, Northwestern will continue to develop proactive strategies to deal with the cuts in appropriations. The plan will also look to manage shrinking budgets. Cunningham also mentioned in her letter her stressing of importance of higher education to the future of Oklahoma and protecting funding as much as possible.
“The important thing is to be proactive in this situation,” said Valencia. “The last thing we want to do is cause panic. That’s completely unnecessary at this point.”
According to Valencia, it is too premature to provide comment on whether or not layoffs are to be included in the plans.
“It’s too premature to be discussing any sort of firing or providing early retirements because we won’t know the true outlook on the projected numbers until December,” said Valencia. “Really, until we get clarity on what the real shortfall of revenue is and where higher education sits on state priority through legislative sessions, we can’t talk about layoffs.”
He also went on to say that the amount of money given in wages to employees was not a factor in the freeze at all.
“I want to thank each of you for your commitment to Northwestern and its students during these challenging times. Your loyalty and dedication to Northwestern are truly appreciated,” said Cunningham in her message to the faculty and staff.