Budget Cuts and Layoffs Heat Up UVM Campus

There have been some heated discussions on the Middlebury interwebs concerning 51 Main and the budget cuts recently announced by President Liebowitz, but things here have remained relatively tame in comparison to the situation at UVM.

According to the Burlington Free Press, President Dan Fogel yesterday announced a litany of budget cuts and 16 staff layoffs, including:

• Eliminating the varsity baseball and softball teams
• Declining to fill 18 tenure-track faculty positions and 4 new faculty positions
• Freezing salaries for non-unionized employees who make $75,000 a year or more.
• “Reductions in administrative areas” totaling more than $7 million.
• Eliminating physical therapy services offered through UVM’s Center for Health and Wellbeing.
• Increasing the overall student faculty ratio by 5 percent, from 15.2 to 1 to the goal embodied in the university’s strategic plan, 16 to 1.

This round of budget cuts and layoffs is expected to save $10.8 million. Another phase of cuts and layoffs is expected in April.

Needless to say, the students and faculty of UVM are decidedly unhappy with the decisions made by President Fogel. One of the most controversial decisions he made was not to take a cut in his own salary, as our own President Liebowitz has done (10%). According to Nancy Welch, Professor of English, the administration recently “added an additional $2 million in salary spending just in the past year just for the 38 people earning over $150,000 a year.”

In response, one dissenter spray painted a message targeted to President Fogel on the exterior of the controversial Davis Center. Yesterday, a mix of hundreds of students and faculty marched on Waterman, UVM’s version of Old Chapel. You can watch videos of the protest not only at WCAX-TV, but also at the Burlington Free Press. Several of the protesters called for the resignation of President Fogel and several other administrators.

Although vandalizing a building is profoundly counterintuitive (imagine the expense of cleaning spray paint off of brick), it seems that the protesters’ minds are in the right place: they are concerned with the continued quality of the education offered at UVM and the well-being of those employees whose jobs have been eliminated.