The PSU Board of Trustees met on June 6th and 7th to create PSU’s budget. Concerningly, the Administration asserted it had already “cut to the bone,” described the need to "hand out" wage increases and coult not answer questions about the market share that PSU’s enrollment represents, nor about competitor institutions in the state.*
“At the F&A meeting yesterday we heard Administration use the phrase “hand out” to refer to employee compensation increases. Employees are not at this university for handouts,” said PSU-AAUP President Emily Ford. “We are here for students. Employees and students at this university feel deeply disrespected when the Board pushes Administration to “cut to the bone.” Employees and students feel deeply disrespected when Administration and this very Board of Trustees are not, right now, getting that [available funding] from the state legislature while we are here fighting to afford to pay the rent and feed our families. If the Board feels so sure that we can obtain state funding why does the budget not include any state appropriations in its budget, especially when Oregon’s General Fund Revenue Forecast shows increases for the next eight years?”
“Staff retention and student enrollment have already been impacted by budget cuts. We are currently dealing with students leaving or not even starting at PSU because they can’t get the supports they need, and we are trying to graduate the ones who are ready to finish while classes are canceled or modalities are changed due to these cuts, often forcing them to delay graduation or take time off work they need to do to survive,” said Cristina Restad, an academic advisor to undergraduate students in the School of Business speaking to the Board of Trustees zoom. “We all love this place but we’re at a point where our working conditions have been cut so deeply to the bone, that maintaining that love of what we do requires self-exploitation. Budgets are statements of PSU’s values. We need you to be the champions of my hard-working faculty and staff colleagues, repairing our outcomes and enrollment through deep reserve spending. We need the members on this board to create a budget that stops the cuts and deeply invests in dignity and respect.”
Watch the F&A committee meeting here and the full BoT meeting here. Read PSU-AAUP President Emily Ford and VP for Organizing Cristina Restad’s remarks here.
*Paragraph corrected from June 17th newsletter email.