According to an agreement worked out with Student Assembly executives last night, College Provost Barry Scherr will consider student input on the proposed budget cuts before the cuts are finalized later in the year.
Both the executives and Scherr were optimistic about this opportunity for communication between students and the administration but said that students' impact will be limited by a need to cut a certain amount from the budget.
Sometime before the end of Fall term, Scherr will provide the Assembly with a letter outlining the cuts to be made in each area. The Assembly will then collect feedback from students, which it will summarize in a report slated to be presented to Scherr by the beginning of Winter term.
Scherr has also agreed to meet with the Assembly at large after they receive his report, and again after he receives theirs.
Assembly executives said the agreement provides students with a rare opportunity to have their opinions about the budget heard and carefully considered by administrators.
"It's huge that the administration has given us a window of opportunity to respond," Student Life Committee Chair Amit Anand '03 said. "That's something that's hardly ever been seen in recent student government history -- hardly ever has the administration taken the students so seriously."
Academic Affairs Committee Chair Jonathan Lazarow '05 said students have largely felt left out of the budget process -- something he believes Scherr aims to remedy through his arrangement with the Assembly.
"I think he realized that there were some mistakes in the way the budget cuts were handled," Lazarow said. "Especially during interim between Summer and Fall terms, there was a lack of communication with students."
Scherr said the comment period was beingh made in recognition of these types of student sentiments..
"What the students are expressing to me is that there hasn't been much room for student input," Scherr said. "What I'm trying to do is allow for a way for students to express their concerns. I'll consider these and work from there."
But Scherr said that while he remains open to student input and will seriously consider the Assembly's report, he is limited by a need to trim a certain basic amount from the budget.
Furthermore, his letter to the Assembly will be based on recommendations made by campus department heads, who likely have an accurate sense of what kind of cuts their departments can realistically sustain. For this reason, the cuts proposed in his letter are unlikely to be significantly altered by student input, unless students come out uniformly opposed to a specific cuts.
"One assumes that the department heads have made the best suggestions they can," Scherr said, adding that "overwhelming" student consensus on one issue would be most influential.
That area of united opinion , Lazarow said, will almost certainly be the library cuts, which have received vocal criticism from both students and faculty.
"Everybody's concerned with the libraries," Lazarow said. "That is the one overwhelming issue that's going to come back to us -- we know it and the provost knows it."
But Lazarow said he is not optimistic that even an outpouring of student criticism will be successful in eliminating the library cuts.
"No matter how much we kick and scream, certain cuts have to be made and I think [College Librarian Richard] Lucier has made that pretty clear," he said. "But maybe we can get the administration to cut different things."
The Assembly will compile its summary of student opinions by conducting surveys, polls and holding one-on-one sessions with students, Anand said. The exact method of collecting information will likely be decided by a resolution presented at next Tuesday's Assembly meeting, he added.
But both Scherr and the executives stressed that the budget will remain open to change even after the Assembly submits its proposal in the winter.
"As the provost likes to say, there's no such word as final," Lazarow said.
