On Monday, March 4, from 12:00 to 1:00 p.m., President Radenka Maric and other key members of the University of Connecticut administration, including CFO Jeffrey Geoghegan and Provost Anne D’Alleva, hosted their third University Town Hall Meeting of the semester. This town hall, like its virtual counterparts in January and February, aimed to give students and faculty the opportunity to discuss the state of UConn’s budget with the university’s top officials.
In the midst of a potential budget crisis which UConn plans to relieve with an across-the-board 15% reduction in operating support costs, administrators and faculty have been tirelessly lobbying the state government to provide an increase in state support. Those present in the Student Union Theater were almost overwhelmingly opposed to the administration’s policy regarding cuts, prompting a number of impassioned speeches and, in some cases, out-of-turn outbursts, from those present.
Administrators began the public forum with an update regarding their work in the Connecticut legislature, where they have focused on imploring the state and Governor Ned Lamont to address the shortfall.
“The legislature’s Appropriations Committee is deliberating on the Governor’s proposed budget,” said Joann Lombardo, UConn’s Senior Director of Governmental Relations. “They have until the beginning of April to make a determination on whether or not they will adopt his budget.”
Lombardo encouraged the UConn community to participate in UConn Strong, an advocacy organization that promotes the value of the university to the state of Connecticut, noting their own grassroots lobbying is limited by their status as a state entity. As of Mar. 4, UConn Strong has sent more than a quarter of a million emails to community and business leaders across the state, and provided on-campus tours and visits for legislators.
“I think they’re listening,” said Provost D’Alleva on the topic of the legislature’s reception to UConn’s proposals. “We share with them the value of the university. Every legislator receives from us a local impact statement of how much value residents from their towns receive from the university.”
President Maric noted that last year, UConn’s budget shortfall numbered $160 million, but the university was able to successfully lobby legislators and the Governor to address it. Administrators hope negotiations will result in the same outcome this year.
“We have 86 meetings booked with individual legislators,” Maric said. “Each time we go there we promote the value of UConn.”
Most in attendance, however, were not convinced by the university’s arguments, and expressed a number of concerns with their approach.
“Last year, we were in a $160 million shortfall that was thankfully solved by the legislature, but it doesn’t seem like anything has changed to address whatever problems caused it,” said Professor of Mathematics Álvaro Lozano-Robledo. “I don’t see that there’s any plan to actually end this never-ending budget crisis.”
Lozano-Robledo’s concerns also involved a lack of transparency from the administration regarding UConn’s budgetary problems.
“There have been all sorts of cluster hires, hires in departments, all sorts of internal grants before I heard the news in late December,” he said, noting that nothing from the administration appeared to indicate a budget crisis before the news was revealed; if anything, the opposite was true.
President Maric listed off fundraising, new revenue generators, enrollment, and efficiency as long-term plans to financially stabilize UConn. One such revenue generator mentioned by Provost D’Alleva is the recently-approved online Master’s degree program in Social Work, which she projects will bring UConn up to speed with top competitors in the academic landscape.
Another concern from faculty involved a new “Common Curriculum,” the university’s proposed revision of current general education requirements and content areas.
“I teach one of the most popular general education courses at the university, and every year I teach hundreds of STEM majors about the humanities,” one professor in the English and Literatures, Cultures, and Languages departments testified. “I teach them creativity, I teach them to laugh in class.”
“I will not be able to teach that course as a TOI1 (Topic of Inquiry 1 in the new Common Curriculum), which is scheduled to be without TAs. If I’m forced to go to a model where I’m teaching a very large class with no TAs, and it’s impossible to imagine this won’t happen with the scale of the cuts, it will become a multiple choice exam class.”
“I will have to tell my students: you are being cheated and you are being lied to. This class cannot deliver on what it proposed to do any more without small group instruction.”
A common worry regarding the new budget cuts is that they will contribute to an increase in class sizes and elimination of discussion sections, exacerbated by the potential downsizing of graduate student programs, and therefore, TA positions as well.
“We do not have that kind of discretionary money,” said History professor Peter Baldwin. “A cut even of half that size would mean the elimination of the graduate program [in History]… which means enormous class sizes.”
“I do want to acknowledge how difficult it must be for you, to be facing a group of angry faculty and students,” Baldwin said. “while you’re presiding over the decline of the University of Connecticut.
This language was echoed by American Studies professor Melanie Newport, who questioned how the UConn administration planned to “rationalize catastrophic and operationally impossible cuts to departments as an intellectual project.”
She ended her remarks with an encapsulation of the widespread frustration, disillusionment, and outrage amongst professors, staff, and students towards university leadership.
“How do you plan to retain or regain the trust of the faculty after destroying UConn’s intellectual mission?”
“We are a team, we are going to remain strong,” Maric concluded. “We are going to convey that message and we are going to be persistent in our message of the value of UConn education.”