Can't Stop The Cuts

The hits just keep on coming for UT as state tightens its budget — again

Some 300 students, faculty and staff gathered at the corner of Andy Holt Avenue and Volunteer Boulevard Oct. 22, the day before the University of Tennessee Board of Trustees began its two-day pow wow to discuss yet another round of state-mandated budget cuts affecting higher education.

Students and professors alike held up picket signs that read “Defend Public Education” and “Stop the Cuts,” a phrase that would be repeated ad nauseum throughout the roughly hour-long rally.

“Our numbers are declining, our wages are falling, and our responsibility and pressure is increasing. We are all hurting here, and we are being asked to sacrifice more,” said Jon Shefner, president of the Knoxville chapter of the United Campus Workers-Communications Workers of America.

Besides the UCW and Progressive Student Alliance, the two organizations primarily responsible for the protest, Rep. Mike Turner, D-Nashville, made the trip to Knoxville to support the cause, as did the city’s Democratic Rep. Joe Armstrong.

“I showed up to one of these rallies when they were making cuts in 2001, and there were only about 10 people,” Turner quipped.

Knoxville city councilman Bob Becker stood behind the podium as Thunderclap Newman’s lone ’60s hit “Something in the Air” played over the loudspeaker, and Knox County Commissioner Mark Harmon, also a UT associate professor of journalism and electronic media, stood picketing in the middle of the crowd.
“It’s often who can scream and holler the most that doesn’t get affected by these cuts,” Turner said before he took the podium to speak. “So [the UCW and students] are doing the right thing by coming together as one loud voice.”

It was a sign of unity, certainly, but, just as certainly, UT President John Petersen abided by Gov. Phil Bredesen’s demands to ax $17 million from the university system’s budget, following $21 million in deductions made before the academic year even began. In all, the UT-Knoxville campus alone has cut more than $15 million from its budget this year.

The board did vote at its meeting Oct. 24 to save the Department of Audiology and Speech Pathology, one of three programs recommended for phased closure in July. An aggressive campaign by the community forced the board to work out a plan keeping the program and clinics operating in Knoxville but be administered by the UT Health and Science Center College of Allied Health Sciences in Memphis. The Industrial and Organizational Psychology graduate program in the College of Business Administration and the dance program minor in the College of Education, Health and Human Sciences are still targeted for elimination once students currently in the respective programs complete their degrees.

To deal with sharply declining revenues, nearly $56 million were deducted from higher education in July despite the state’s earlier projections of higher ed gaining nearly $67 million.

According to Lola Potter, the Department of Finance and Administration’s public information officer, the state's general fund tax collection missed projections by roughly $140 million through the first two months of this budget year, thanks in large part to the dire economic straits (and the $700 billion “rescue” plan) facing the country.

“We’re very dependent on the state level on big-ticket items, and we’ve got housing construction sort of stopped and the automotive industry way down,” Gov. Bredesen told the Associated Press in early October. “So we take a particularly bad hit.”

Tennessee is one of nine states with no state income tax — while seven have none whatsoever, Tennessee and New Hampshire tax dividends and interest income only.

Potter says her department’s commissioner Dave Goetz is merely doing what he can to keep the state afloat.

“Right now we’re just trying to meet our revenue needs,” she says. “The legislature meets again in January, and it usually takes them until April or May to get the new budget done, which doesn’t give us relief right now. Every state department has to make cuts and higher education is not going to be any different.”