On Wednesday, April 17, 2024, in the Wilbur Cross Building’s North Reading Room, the University of Connecticut Board of Trustees held their final meeting of the spring semester. As with the Feb. 28 board meeting, representatives of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) and Graduate Employee & Postdoc Union (GEU) turned out in numbers and gave several speeches in protest of controversial cuts of 15% to UConn’s academic operational support budgets.
Representatives of the public were provided with a 30-minute window to offer prepared remarks to members of the Board of Trustees in attendance, including President Radenka Maric and CFO Jeffrey Geoghegan. Undergraduate, graduate, and faculty protestors lined the walls of the guest seating section, carrying posters and fliers imploring university leaders to stop the cuts and fight for their continued status as a flagship research institution.
Prior to speeches from the assembled AAUP and GEU members, Undergraduate President of the Student Body at UConn’s Avery Point campus, Zachary Boudah, issued brief remarks regarding an ongoing attempt to strengthen regional campus representation in key governing institutions at UConn.
Boudah, the first student from a regional campus ever to sit on the University Senate, called for the Board of Trustees to adopt proposals which would delegate significant authority to regional student governments. Chief amongst these privileges would be the ability for regional campuses to nominate their own representatives for the University Senate, a process previously controlled by USG at Storrs.
Following Boudah’s remarks, English Department Head and AAUP stalwart Clare Costley King’oo began a series of public comments regarding the cuts, urging the university to consider their effect on the mental and physical health of faculty and staff.
“When I arrived, it was an exciting time,” King’oo said, “The university was growing, we were able to hire, and we were able to bring in more students—but faculty hiring has not kept up with the increase in student enrollment.
“We are facing a moment now [with the cuts] where we are expected to take in a larger number of students with fewer faculty and fewer staff members,” she continued, “I have not seen such poor well-being, such poor health [among professors], as in the last two years.”
Citing the example of one English department professor who continued to teach online classes even while consigned to a hospital bed, King’oo emphasized the resilience of her faculty while also highlighting a disturbing uptick in physical and medical emergencies.
Fred Biggs, also a professor in the English Department and the next to speak, addressed President Maric directly and asked her to “repeal [her] five-year financial plan” at the beginning of his remarks.
“Academics aren’t opposed to change,” Biggs said, emphasizing the educational strides taken by the English department since he arrived at UConn 30 years ago, “but new ideas don’t inherently drive progress.”
“UConn is making changes overwhelmingly opposed by the faculty,” he emphasized, encouraging the university to end all contracts with consultants and connect openly and transparently with faculty.
Mary Beth Allen, an assistant professor in the Department of Literatures, Cultures, and Languages, urged the university to mobilize and fight for “the permanent funding we all need to survive.”
“People who are currently working at UConn will lose their jobs,” Allen warned, “This is what we are talking about when you call for 15% for academic units over five years.”
According to Allen, operating costs for many departments in CLAS are 95% or more personnel and salaries, meaning “there is no way to avoid layoffs” were cuts to go through.
Departments were taking on increased costs even as a budget crisis loomed on the horizon. Allen cites a particular “cluster hire” in the field of AI, made only months before university officials revealed they were in the red.
“Faculty meetings are no longer about education,” she said, “They are doomsday meetings where we wonder which one of us will lose our job first and which graduate programs will be phased out.”
“Will you find another way to balance our budget, one which protects the quality of a UConn education?” she demanded of the Board of Trustees, to rapturous applause, “[The UConn of the future] is not the kind of place I would send my own child for an education.”
Bradley Simpson, an associate professor and Director of Graduate Studies in History, offered a portrait of how budget cuts would affect graduate students, a topic that has been at the centerpiece of Labor Coalition activism.
Projections indicate budget cuts would lead to a decline in graduate student enrollment and fewer TA positions. This, as a result, would lead to larger class sizes and increased workload for those graduate students who do remain, with trickle-down effects on undergraduate education.
“Let’s be clear; these budget cuts are a conscious choice to radically undermine the teaching and research capacity of this university,” Simpson said, “There is no way to meet these requirements, not just [for] the History department, but all departments on campus.”
“It will mean the end of most graduate programs at this university.”
These cuts, Simpson warned, are causing prospective graduate students to think twice about coming to UConn out of fear of not being supported.
“If we go through with these budget cuts,” Simpson said, “it’s incumbent upon us to explain to Connecticut families that they will be subject to increased loans for increased graduation times.”
“UConn will be crippled for years, if not decades to come.”