Kleenex boxes and teary-eyed emails: Welcome to the state budget crisis

While we at the WatchCat have been busy with other things, kudos to the Desert Lamp for putting up this email (sent to UA faculty and staff) from UA President Robert Shelton outlining the disappointing and “stupefying” decision by the State to not appropriate general funds to the Arizona University System (the University of Arizona, Arizona State University and Northern Arizona University). This amounts to about $30 million currently lost out on by the UA itself.

To summarize the rest of Shelton’s letter, the Arizona Board of Regents recently convened for a special meeting, where they decided to draft a letter to the governor’s office asking for both December and January payments, as the UA has been forced to dip into its emergency cash reserve funds.

Following suit, Inside NAU (think UA News) came out with this news report-style release heavily quoting NAU President John Haeger, who largely reflects the thoughts of Shelton, however, seeming not so “fire and brimstone”-y. No such release appears anywhere on ASU’s website or on ASU President Michael Crow’s site. It is not far-fetched, though, to think that a similar email has been sent out to ASU faculty and staff.

During Shelton’s “State of the University” address in November, Shelton seemed downright optimistic, saying that the key to the UA fighting through the state budget crisis lied in three words: access, quality and discovery. At the same time, the president painted a bleak picture of the future, saying that despite the UA Transformation being in full motion, “now, sadly, we will need to continue that dialogue.” Yikes! The stages up to this point of the UA Transformation have been scary enough. Might we see a UA Transformation, Part 2, in the near future to offset the money the State is withholding from the universities? $30 million? It seems an inevitability.

Shelton’s recent comments, combined with his words at the State of the University, should make every soul on the UA campus tremble. In addition, he also said at his annual address that the UA was heading toward “a perilous cliff” in July 2011 (when federal stimulus money will run out).

It seems Shelton was right, at least partially. The UA’s fate may indeed come down to access, quality and discovery—access to the funds the university needs being denied; quality of education dramatically dropping even more; and the discovery that the “perilous cliff” may be closer than we originally thought.

Welcome to Arizona…where this happens:

Thanks to UA Journalism Professor Jim Nintzel and his Reporting Public Affairs class for turning us on to this gem of a video.