Editor,
Judging by the Lobo's latest reports on UNM's 2009-10 budget, the UNM Board of Regents has adopted a four-step strategy for covering its 5.2 percent increase in expenses over last year.
Step one: Rob the poor to give to the rich.
The budget approved by the regents Friday calls for decreasing expenditures to its branch campus by rates ranging from 6 percent at Taos and Las Alamos to about 4 percent at Gallup. Who attends these outlying branches most affected by the regents' budgetary shell game? The working people of New Mexico: nurses, teachers, office workers, retailers, night-shifters, farmers, factory workers and parents, who are all trying to get a leg up in a tough economy and now find that the educational resources in their communities are being cut at the time when they are most needed. Moreover, budget cuts of 15 percent announced earlier this year to "non-academic services" not only had a direct impact on the livelihoods of UNM staff and maintenance workers who are the backbone of the University, but also meant cuts in the on-campus health care services that so many students depend on.
Step two: Rely heavily on tuition increases while expressing sympathy for people bearing the burden of those increases.
In April, the Board of Regents approved a 5 percent tuition increase for students in New Mexico and a 10 percent increase for out-of-state students. That should get the kids in neighboring states coming in droves. At the time, University officials insisted the increase was necessary to avoid a decrease in state funds. But according to the budget approved Friday, state funds are decreasing anyway. "State funds are less than last year," said Regent Jack Fortner in Monday's Lobo. Fortner went on to express empathy for parents paying higher tuition, noting that his daughter was also a UNM student and adding that keeping tuition as low as possible was still the regents' "No. 1 priority." But the fact is, UNM's Board of Regents has been relying more and more on tuition increases to cover its expenses. Next year's 5 percent increase follows a 4.85 percent increase over last year, and that does not include rising student fees directed toward relatively frivolous expenditures like renovating The Pit.
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Step three: Raid the monies meant for silly things like research, education and the arts.
The Budget approved May 1 calls for a nearly 30 percent decrease in private grants and contracts and an almost 20 percent decrease in endowments. Endowments and grants of course pay for such things as scientific and social science research, educational programs and initiatives and arts programs all essential to any university's educational mission.
Step four: Take the public out of the public university.
State dollars aren't the only monies leaving UNM. All local bonds given to the University have been cut from the regents' latest budget. Who needs public dollars anyway? Public dollars could spell greater public oversight, more civic engagement and a true investment by the people of New Mexico in their state's flagship university, and the regents certainly don't want that since it would mean they would actually be accountable to the public's interests instead of the private interests of coal companies and shim-sham corporate contractors like Lobo Energy.
Andrew B. Marcum
UNM student
