Budget Talks Continue around Longwood

To put things lightly, Longwood University is in a pickle. Longwood needs to make up for a total 25 percent budget cut. Prior to academic year 2009-10, Longwood was hit with a 10 percent cut. Another slash amounting to 15 percent came from an order by Governor Timothy Kaine in September. Currently, students are not feeling direct implications of such cuts thanks to stimulus money from the government amounting to $3.1 million. However, after time, such funds will dry up and that is what Dr. Brian Bates, Chair of Sociology, Anthropology and Criminal Justice Studies, is trying to fix.

Bates's resolution calls for a "strategy where tuition increases in FY2011 be made cost-neutral to students through a reduction in the athletic component of the Comprehensive Fee, and that other components of the Comprehensive Fee remain level-funded." The Academic Affairs Committee (ACC) passed his resolution during their meeting on Oct. 27. Bates said that the athletic fee is the single largest in the Comprehensive Fee and has noticed the largest amount of growth in the past decade. Such a strategy does not call for a deduction in the University's Division I status, however, some faculty see that as a viable option. Dr. Wayne McWee, Provost & Vice President for Academic Affairs, and Bates both agree athletics is largely a visibility issue.

"When I travel throughout the country, I am a walking billboard for Longwood. You would be amazed how many people come up to me in the airport and say 'I saw you all play,'" said McWee. How to preserve the visibility issue without losing touch with athletics is a very important question to be considered, said McWee. He fears that a reduction in the athletic component will be a negative effect on athletics. "What have we just said to our athletes who are working so hard to represent you? If we stay Division I, but reduce the budget too significantly, we would have a hard time recruiting."

Bates argues, however, Longwood needs to rediscover the core mission of the institution. "In tough budgetary times, you need to .maintain your core mission intact." To maintain Longwood's mission, requires revenue. Bates said he does not think that students should have to suffer a massive tuition increase to have the core mission preserved. "Some of the scenarios out there are looking at anywhere from a 24 percent to a 31 percent tuition increase over the next three years." The proposal passed by the AAC would, to some extent, make some of that increase cost-neutral to students. One of the proposed scenarios within the resolution calls for tuition to increase up to 30 percent, but students would only feel half of that increase, as cuts would come from the athletic component of the Comprehensive Fee.

Bates said that $4.8 million in stimulus money is available, but that amount is usually overestimated. Stimulus money will create a surplus next year, but a tuition increase will be felt because it is in addition to the stimulus funds put in place, said Bates. "The stimulus money is simply putting the deficit further down the road and buying it some time to come up with solutions to fill the deficit." Longwood receives monies allocated to two separate funds, which McWee explained thoroughly. The Education & General (E&G) Fund is the home of salaries on the state payroll. Auxiliary funding is the place where separate budgets pay for separate salaries, such as the athletic budget. Money that goes into this includes fees and has to pay for itself. E&G has two major funding sources, the state and tuition. Legally, the state must pay 60 percent of the E&G cost, but they are currently nowhere near that mark. The E&G budget cut is the only budget alluded to by the Governor when cuts are announced since that is where the state funding is held.

"What has been proposed is not shifting money from the auxiliary budget to E&G budget," said Bates. Instead, he is proposing "an outright cut," which comes from one component of the Comprehensive Fee to the auxiliary budget. The effect he hopes for is that the tuition increases and the athletic cut will offset one another to "the greatest extent possible." He said it might not be possible for a total offset every future fiscal year, but it would compensate for next fiscal year. The Comprehensive Fee is the sole domain of the Board of Visitors. They may change the number to any degree under their statutory rights. "No matter what, your cost is going up. I think it's a negative impact because [The Commonwealth] is forcing you to suck up a major portion of the cost of education that we shouldn't have to pay," said McWee.

The Commonwealth has jurisdiction to say that Longwood can only raise tuition to a certain percentage in order to receive stimulus funding. According to McWee, in order to receive stimulus funds, the percentage of a tuition increase cannot exceed 5 percent. This goes back to moving money from the two funding structures, which is "very difficult" according to McWee. Furthermore, such money can only be moved for 12 months and the fee will then have to go up to compensate for the switch. An example of what can be moved is campus police funding. "There is some latitude about where we might charge some things. An example would be campus security. They do auxiliary work, but they protect the E&G buildings," said McWee.

Bates summed up the discussion by saying he at no point believes athletics is not important. "The problem is, anytime you have a deficit, you have two choices. Increase revenue or cut services. We can't raise tuition enough to completely fill that void without some cuts somewhere," said Bates. McWee called for people to question what athletics means to them and to Longwood. "Is athletics a vibrant part of student life? What happens if you strip a major part of athletics? Students are coming because of the overall thing that we are. If we take that away, would they be likely to come?