A Year Later: Who will #SaveUConn from itself? 

Opportunities for students to engage with the University of Connecticut’s budget at the state level were recently open to students. Jon Heiden, Undergraduate Student Government President, announced a Public Hearing on Appropriations for Higher Education that students had the opportunity to attend in an email to the undergraduate population on Feb. 16. 

 Additionally, university President Radenka Maric announced the first of four town halls this semester to discuss the budgets for UConn and UConn Health and what actions the University has taken — and plans to take — to address potential projected shortfalls, in a university-wide email on Feb. 19. 

The Daily Campus Editorial Board has previously advocated for students to voice their feelings about the university, positive or negative. We again encourage students to take part in these town halls. It is important for the university to hear the voices of the students and faculty who will be directly affected by the resulting state budget.  

 But both of these invitations to engage with the state budget left out one crucial component: UConn’s own culpability in their budgetary crisis. Similarly to last year around this time, #SaveUConn posters dominated campus in response to Maric’s announcement of a near $160 million budget cut.  

It is undeniable that the state of Connecticut has shifted away from funding public education. The Editorial Board has covered the conservative nature of Gov. Ned Lamont’s fiscal policy and how it has impacted the overall funding of universities statewide in Connecticut. For the past two decades, public funding has decreased for colleges and universities.  

This year in Lamont’s proposed budget, the state’s base funding to higher education institutions has gone up, but their overall budgets will go down when the loss of pandemic-era funding is taken into account. This is disheartening to hear, as the pandemic influx of money greatly benefitted universities nationwide. According to a study, 94% of community colleges and 90% of institutions overall credited the emergency funds with helping to keep students at risk of dropping out enrolled. The money also helped institutions absorb the shock of enrollment declines, lost revenue and other financial stressors during the pandemic.  

So the question has to be raised, how did UConn spend that money? Rather than invest it into greater resources for students, professors and university officials they went on a mad spending spree building new dorms, athletic facilities and other cosmetic upgrades to the Storrs campus. 

Not only was the Board of Trustees well aware of the political climate surrounding higher education and the general trend towards shifting funding away; they were well aware of the expiring nature of the COVID-19 funds. But the university continues to deny their own role in this problem. Last year when UConn and USG had students bussed to the capitol there was plenty of criticism for Lamont and his policies, but there was very little acknowledgement of the mistakes made by the university that got us here.  

The first step to fixing a problem is acknowledging that a problem exists. To avoid budgetary crises like this in the future, both the state of Connecticut and UConn must do better for their citizens and students.