Faculty members say they are having a "crisis of confidence" in President David Schmidly and other administrative officials, whose actions, they claim, have caused the Legislature to propose bigger budget cuts at UNM.
More than 230 faculty members have signed a petition that calls for a special meeting to address their concerns.
The petition says Schmidly, Executive Vice President David Harris and President of the Board of Regents Jamie Koch have soured UNM's reputation in the Legislature. They say the trio has done this through acts of cronyism, irregular hiring practices and using instructional funds to pay for administrative salaries.
The budget recommendations made by the Legislative Finance Committee show a difference in proposed cuts for UNM compared to those for NMSU. The petition signers believe this is due to the Legislature's disapproval of UNM's financial practices.
A legislative proposal would cut about $9.5 million of UNM's state funding, with about $5.5 million coming from its Instruction and General funds.
In the same proposal, NMSU would lose about $1.8 million in funding, with $108,000 coming from its I&G funds.
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In anticipation of state budget cuts, Schmidly began a hiring pause in October and allowed Harris' Business and Finance Department to harvest surplus funds throughout the University.
UNM issued a statement deploring the faculty petition.
"With so much at stake for our University during this fiscal crisis, it's unfortunate that some members of our faculty have chosen to take this route now," UNM spokeswoman Susan McKinsey said in an e-mail. "In Santa Fe and in Washington, there is just too much at stake for the University community to be divided by this."
Darrell Pehr, spokesman for New Mexico State University, said the disparity in proposed budget cuts is due to a state funding formula for enrollment that the Legislative Finance Committee applied to both universities.
This would mean no administrator's actions could have caused the Legislature's budget cuts to seem to favor NMSU.
Pehr said NMSU is merely being rewarded for its enrollment growth and that the cuts were "based on an arithmetic calculation in accordance with a documented formula methodology that has been in place since 2003" - not politics.
"If you reach a certain percentage in enrollment growth, the Legislature compensates you for those extra students and kind of encourages you to retain and recruit new students by giving you an extra amount of money," he said. "New Mexico State has been able to do that . two years in a row, so we've gotten some of that money, and that figures into the budget. It's like, if you grow, we give you so much extra money and, of course, UNM did not grow enough to get that extra money. So, when they're looking at budgets, that's the difference right there."
Howard Snell, president of the Faculty Senate, said the petition did not originate from within his organization.
"I'll admit that as Faculty Senate president, I hear faculty express frustration, and I also hear other faculty express support for the people named on that petition," Snell said. "I think that to understand the motivations and the questions that people have, you have to go to the meeting and listen to the discussions."
The petition was circulated for about a week, signed by about 13 percent of the Main Campus faculty and handed to University Secretary Vivian Valencia on Friday for signature verification.
Policy A51 of the faculty constitution states that 5 percent of the faculty must sign a petition before the Faculty Governance Committee can convene a meeting to address their concerns.
Snell said the petition is subject to the rules and regulation of the Faculty Governance Committee because it was framed by faculty members outside the Senate. The committee now has the authority to set the agenda and time of the meeting the petition calls for.
"General faculty meetings are different from Faculty Senate meetings in that they're an opportunity for all the faculty of the University to vote to make a motion on matters that are important to the University," Snell said. "Some people think that a general faculty meeting is more representative of the total faculty rather than just representative of the elected body (of the Senate)."
The Faculty Governance Committee will meet this afternoon to set a date and agenda for the meeting.
