Cut to the Chase

By Ethan Wang, Contributing Columnist

Published on Tuesday, January 26, 2010

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Every time our professors assign a major homework assignment, we know that we should probably start working on it early. But, naturally, we always end up finishing the work at the last minute. When it comes to fixing our whopping $100 million budget shortfall, the college administration is guilty of the same fault … or so it appears.

In less than two weeks, College President Jim Yong Kim will need to submit next year’s budget to the Board of Trustees — complete with the cuts that he plans on implementing. Yet, during last week’s budget forum, the only definitive change that Kim announced was the scrapping of plans to build a new dining hall (“Kim avoids specifics of budget slashes, layoffs,” Jan. 19). What about the rumors of layoffs, increased class size and the end of loan-free financial aid? Kim glossed over these proposals saying that everything is still on the table for consideration. He added that the administration still needed to work on the specifics and that there were still a lot of decisions that haven’t been made. It’s been how many months since the College began tackling the budget problems? Either the administrators are equally bad procrastinators as students, or — more likely — they are not being entirely upfront about their backroom decisions.

While it’s understandable that every last number in the budget has yet to be totaled, you would expect the cuts to be less murky, given the current timetable. How is it possible that with less than two weeks until the budget proposal is due, the College still doesn’t have a general ballpark number of workers it plans to lay off? The administration evidently knows more than it is telling us. But, with all of the rumored cuts having a significant impact on some portion of the Dartmouth community, we have the right to know exactly how the College plans on implementing them.

On the surface, the College definitely appears to be keeping us informed during the budget process. Dartmouth has sent out campus-wide budget e-mails, held financial forums and has even created an excitingly-titled web site devoted to budget issues. All these resources are jam-packed with PR jargon about how difficult cuts are inevitable, how the College is trying its best to balance the need for reductions with maintaining growth and how the overall “Dartmouth Experience” will be unaffected.

But, underneath all this rhetoric, there is little to no information about the thing people want to know the most: exactly what the cuts will be.

When cornered at Q&A sessions or pressed by reporters, the administration has divulged small bits of information on specific proposals, but never goes into details — claiming that the finer points still need to be worked out. The difficulty which it takes to squeeze out information about potential cuts is unfaithful to the College’s promise of making the process transparent. Specifics may change after the trustees examine the proposal, but we deserve to know exactly how things currently stand instead of having to sit in the dark until the final budget gets passed.

Budget cuts are always a touchy subject and do not make for good public relations, but hiding the details of plans under mountains of rhetoric doesn’t do anyone a favor. As unsettling as the final cuts may be, even more disconcerting are blanket statements like “there may be changes to financial aid.” These vague statements achieve nothing, but stir the imagination and provide for untrue rumors. If there are any specifics, make them known. Even if the actual changes are not finalized, they will at least quell the false information.

If the administration really wants our input on the budget, it needs to start by actually telling us something substantive instead of boring us with rhetoric. Kim and his advisors should provide a simple table of every cut they are considering, exactly what the cut entails and how much money it is projected to save. Not only would this provide a straightforward way of finding out how the changes impact us, but it would also shed insight into the necessity of each cut in balancing the budget.

President Kim often likes to tell students that “the world’s troubles are your troubles.” Well, the College’s troubles are also our troubles, and as such he needs to start giving us the complete picture of what’s going on with the budget cuts.