The Compass

Andrew Wilkinson addresses student leaders in the called meeting in room 109 of the Dunlap-Mathis building. Wilkinson is working with other USG schools to coordinate a protest on March 15 pending the BOR decisions.

Paul Glaser, vice-president of Business and Finance, is working with other adminstrators to come up with proposed cuts totaling $3.3 million.

There will not be a tuition hike. Yet.

Under pressure from the state legislature, the Board of Regents is asking University System of Georgia schools to cut their budgets by $300 million. For the moment, this isn't coming out of students' pockets.

"(W)e're not talking about a tuition increase at this point," Marya Leatherwood, vice president for Academic Affairs, said.

Administrators met with student leaders Friday morning to inform them of the current issues, correct misinformation and seek input regarding the budget. The standing-room-only meeting took place in room 109 of the Dunlap-Mathis Building, and students from Oconee participated via teleconferencing.

"This is I guess what we would call trial by fire," Leatherwood said, "not only for myself, who is certainly a newbie on campus, but for our other administrators and directors who are now going to be faced with some very difficult decisions."

Leatherwood has been in her position less than a year.

GSC is expected to make $3.37 million in cuts and submit a proposal to the USG office by noon Saturday.

Some cuts being considered include canceling new staff searches and faculty replacement searches, moving personnel around so that they would be paid out of the auxiliary services budget, eliminating student workers on campus and closing the pool.

Leatherwood also said that the school is likely to face more furlough days, probably 10 if the legislature goes through with their budget cut threats.

Administrators participated in a conference call with Chancellor Erroll Davis and other USG presidents and vice presidents Thursday morning.

The USG will look over GSC's and the other 35 colleges' recommendations over the weekend and come up with a single proposal on Monday for the House-Senate budget committee of the state legislature.

Some cuts may be across the board, affecting all USG colleges. Others may be specific to a particular institution.

Leatherwood summarized the current financial state of GSC. She said that the college was now working with as the same amount of money as they were given for the fiscal year seven years ago, not accounting for inflation. GSC's enrollment has doubled since then.

"We haven't had the kind of parallel increase in our staffing over the years to deal with that volume," she said.

Leatherwood said that the school is already overwhelmed and strapped for resources.

"When we look at a magnitude of this type of cut, we're talking about personnel," she said.

Cuts in faculty and staff, and even just additional furlough days, would affect students, both presently and in the future. Applications, financial aid, and scheduling processes would be delayed. An overall decline in GSC's quality of education could also result.

Leatherwood said that further cuts could have a very negative impact. If it came down to increasing the cost of tuition or making additional cuts, she hoped that students would want the quality of education to take precedent.

"We are very sensitive on this campus to the fact that we are a very affordable option, and, I'm pleased to say, I think most of our students feel that they're getting more than what they're paying for," Leatherwood said, looking around the room. "I see a lot of heads nodding there."

Aaron Paul, president of SGA on the Oconee Campus, spoke on behalf of the students in room 564 at Oconee and said that they would rather take an increase in fees.

"We would rather pay an extra institutional fee... than make significant cuts, because I know that we're already strapped..." he said. "If every student paid an extra $50, well that would be a total of $440,000 earned back."

Paul said that a $200 institutional fee would give GSC $1.76 million.

Leatherwood said that the USG wasn't looking at a fee increase at this point, possibly because such fees are not covered by the HOPE scholarship.

Mary Transue, vice president for Institutional Advancement, said there wasn't much information available at the present.

"As we're going through this process right now, trying to make everybody understand, there aren't a lot of definitive answers on things," she said.

Leatherwood said that the college is adopting a "wait and see" attitude, even as they scrambled to prepare the document of their suggested cuts.

Genesis Pineda, member of SGA and the Latino Students Association, was frustrated at how little time she had to prepare to provide insight.

"It's not fair... that we're just getting this information," Pineda said, "and we as students are like, 'well, what are we supposed to do?'"

The administrators said that they were in the same boat about preparing the budget cut document, since they were instructed to come up with the previous day.

"Is it fair to do it over the weekend, no," Glaser said, "but that's the system we work in."

What cuts did GSC propose? Read the story here: http://media.www.gsccompass.com/media/storage/paper1221/news/2010/02/17/News/Enrollment.Caps.And.Layoffs.Likely.Across.University.System.But.Not.For.Gsc-3882505.shtml

Keep up with the budget crisis on our Facebook group, GSC Compass.

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