Lessons paused to address budget

Instructors and TAs took a stand Thursday and told their students what they see as failed administrative decisions: budget cuts, rising tuition rates and University privatization.

Liza Minno Bloom, a member of Graduate Employees Together, said the discussions were part of the National Day of Action to Defend Public Education, a campaign to raise awareness.

“People don’t know the severity of the budget cuts,” she said. “Right now, it’s a 3.2 percent budget cut. … Next year they’re proposing a 5 percent budget cut. That’s massive. That’s going to be pretty devastating, and people don’t know about it.”
Minno Bloom said some people have a misperception of how severely cuts will affect academics.

“(The administration) really framed discussions as if we had to have 3.2 percent cuts across the board,” she said. “There are other more creative ways I think we could be solving some of the budget problems without going to academic lines.”
Provost Suzanne Ortega said that she supported the day of action.

“It is important that all constituents and citizens take part in this important dialogue. … There is a long history of using class time to engage in important discussions of relevance to students,” she said. “I support this, so long as out-of-class time of this sort does not take up so much time that there is insufficient time to cover specific course material.”

Undergraduate student Sean van Hoose said he hadn’t heard about the issues being discussed until his teacher, Linda Hurley, brought them up in class.
“I agree completely with what they’re saying,” he said.

Lissa Knudsen, GPSA president, said it’s crucial to protect academics.
“The academic mission of the University is being de-prioritized in comparison to other priorities that are not necessarily about education and helping people to become intellectual and grow,” she said. “It’s rather about being cogs and human capital.”
Knudsen said administrators are not looking at the bigger picture.

“The regents and the administration are very behind, creating a legacy from their time here of edifices and brand new buildings,” she said. “But what good do those do if you don’t have any faculty to fill them?”
Ortega said that new buildings promote UNM’s academic mission.

“Faculty research depends on state-of-the-art labs and equipment,” she said. “Likewise, student learning is enhanced by classrooms that allow professors to effectively use state-of-art instructional technology.”
Minno Bloom said she is against “university privatization.”

“Nationally, during these times of ‘budget crises’ … one of the solutions that public institutions, generally, and public universities, specifically, look to are these public-private partnerships,” she said. “It’s really insidious, and it’s a national trend.”
She said this generally takes the form of research funding.

“It makes up the dollars that the University doesn’t have to these private research foundations,” Minno Bloom said. “There are tons of restrictions on what kind of subjects people can teach, what kind of results they put out. … It has a detrimental effect on academic freedom.”

Ortega said that outside funding is important for research.
“Private support enables faculty members to pursue their research interests,” Ortega said. “We would hope that such funds complement rather than replace public funding.”

Knudsen said having fewer graduate and teaching assistants teaching classes affects education quality.
“The last budget cuts that went down disproportionately affect TAs and GAs, and that affects their students,” she said. “It means we’re going to have larger classes and less teachers available.”