The earlier decision to postpone renovation of the Lord Jeffrey Inn does not directly impact student life. The moves outlined by Marx more recently, however, will have immediate impact on student experiences — perhaps for years to come. Reductions in new staff hirings and five to 10 percent budget cuts in nonacademic departments will resonate in all corners of daily life. We’ve already seen signs in Valentine urging us to use china coffee mugs or to only take one napkin at a time. While ostensibly intended to reduce waste, which will cut disposal costs, the move also aims to reduce supply costs. Reducing academic department budgets will most likely result in reduced expenditures on student employees and summer research opportunities. Promised cuts in offers to visiting professors, which may limit variety in course listings, and a slow, foot-dragging approach to hiring professors for tenure-track positions could lead to higher class sizes as early as next year.
While the endowment is not in danger of completely drying up overnight, Marx has shown strength by outlining steps that reflect the same responsible management that brought the endowment to its previous height. With the endowment funding such a large fraction of the College’s operating budget, and the capital campaign facing an uphill battle in reaching out to alumni who are tightening their budgets in the face of the economic climate, Marx’s cuts, though painful, are absolutely necessary.
What’s missing from Marx’s outlined cuts and belt-tightening is a suggestion of how to come out on the other side of the current crisis in better shape than when it began. In his Johnson Chapel address during Homecoming weekend to alumni and friends, Marx cited the progress made in increasing the size of the faculty following the Panic of 1873 and the expansions of financial aid during the depression of the 1890s and the Great Depression of the 1930s. One of the charges to Marx’s cost-reducing administrative working group must be to create a plan for a post-recession Amherst that progresses beyond the intended improvements to Merrill Science Center and the East Campus area.
I have worked as a department manager for a company that faced its own budget crunch. For a year, I was tasked with getting my department to literally give 110 percent. It was, needless to say, difficult to get that result from a staff making barely more than minimum wage. Here at the College — where we pride ourselves on having elite faculty and administrators, the best staff and the brightest students — we should be able to turn these tight times into long-range improvements.
Converting some of the outlying dorms for other uses has rarely been discussed, but now, facing the likely closure of multiple dorms next year, we have the chance to draft a complete master plan for the whole campus. While construction will be on hold until the economic climate becomes more favorable, we must take the coming year to define a complete plan for the remaining dorms to be renovated or converted for other uses. Following the work on the Freshman Quad, the construction has been much more erratic. The College should take a break from building to plan out, year-by-year, the East Campus reconstruction and other renovation plans on a 10-or-more-year schedule, so that once construction can resume, the work is all directed towards that goal.
While Marx’s first e-mail identifying the loss in the endowment was sent to the entire Amherst community, last week’s e-mail was sent only to faculty and staff. Students have found out about the cuts through unofficial channels and word of mouth. While I agree that the cuts outlined in the e-mail are perhaps more detailed than students need to know, students should be much more involved in the conversation than they currently are. If the student body is kept abreast of the changes coming and brought on board by the administration, students are more likely to be amenable to those changes than they will be if they continue to be kept out of the loop and feel as though things are being withheld and hidden from them.
Finally, we need to identify a few departments to be sheltered from the budget-trimming scalpel. As with the College’s reaction to earlier depressions, we need to focus on financial aid outreach. Too many families of high school students will be immediately turned off by the prospect of sending their children to a college with annual student costs in excess of $50,000. The Office of Admissions likewise cannot be expected to cut corners in the same way that we can cut into Facilities, Dining Services and academic departments, especially in terms of outreach to those same students contemplating not applying or matriculating simply for fear of the price tag. In terms of student life, Campus Police needs to be able to provide the same protection to students it always has. The Center for Community Engagement (CCE), explicitly identified in Marx’s e-mail as a place to “slow down on some program development,” should be guaranteed as close to level funding as possible at a time when local and greater communities face shortfalls.
Five years into his presidency, at the launch of an ambitious capital campaign, Marx has taken steps to secure Amherst’s future through what he described during his Homecoming address as “the most tumultuous economic events of my lifetime.” Much more than the monetary results we’ll see at the close of the campaign, Marx’s reaction and guidance through the current recession will no doubt define his presidency as much as the establishment of the CCE has so far. This e-mail to the faculty and staff shows that he’s off to a good start in leading the campus towards better times.
I’ve been critical of President Marx in the past, both in these pages and in conversation, but he has always impressed me with his commitment to his vision of Amherst and higher education in America, a vision many here and elsewhere share with him, myself included. Although he already faces criticism for what he has proposed, his strength of leadership through these hard times will likely be remembered.