Paul van Donkelaar is the University Senate president and a human physiology professor. He sat for an interview with the Emerald on Monday to discuss budget cuts facing the University.
ODE: How is the budget situation playing out?
PVD: The budget issues have kind of overtaken just about everything that’s getting discussed. The process that the central administration is going through to keep everyone up to date on how they’re dealing with the potential shortfalls has been completely transparent. There’s a town hall meeting this coming Wednesday where the provost will give us the latest up-to-date information that he has about how the University is dealing with any potential shortfalls. It will be painful, but at least we’ll all know about the cuts or whatever sort of changes we might have to make for the University to accommodate any cuts. The provost has told us on a number of occasions he wants to avoid anything that even hints at cuts vertically to programs.
ODE: So what exactly are vertical cuts?
PVD: It would mean – department X isn’t bringing in enough money, for example … and therefore it’s not economically viable to keep program X, so we will get rid of it. So every support staff, faculty, everyone who contributes to supporting that department would be out of a job. So that’s the worst case scenario. And I don’t think anyone in the central administration wants to go that route. The problem is that here at the U of O, we’ve done so well at trimming the fat, we are kind of down to the bare minimum … But you’ll still need those programs. Vertical cuts basically become academic programs … that’s the scary road we don’t want to go down.
ODE: How is the faculty, from what you’ve heard; how are they feeling?
PVD: There’s a lot of questions. There’s a lot of rumors out there. No one really knows. The provost doesn’t even know and in some ways the governor doesn’t really know. It’s really out of our hands to a certain extent and to the extent that lack of information makes its way down to the level of faculty and staff where rumors can be created is unfortunate, but it’s just the reality of the current situation. To the extent that drives faculty and staff to creative solutions, that’s a good thing.
ODE: What can you tell us about economics professor Bill Harbaugh’s Senate proposal about lowering executive pay?
PVD: Ah, yes. How much should we pay not just the president, but all the vice presidents, the provost, the vice provosts. That’s something that’s definitely been in the media. There’s a number of institutions across the nation where the presidents have voluntarily cut their pay. Two recent local instances were the University of Washington and Washington State University. That’s kind of been something that’s on the table, open for discussion.
ODE: President Frohnmayer isn’t one of the most highly paid presidents, is he? He’s not in the top list?
PVD: No. He never appears in the top 20 or 40 or 50, even. At a certain level, it’s difficult to compare the central administration’s pay to the faculty’s pay … if we really want to be fair, we should compare them to our peers. If they’re 85 percent of their peers, they’re not getting paid enough. Or their peers are getting paid too much.
ODE: What does the faculty think should be done with Mac Court?
PVD: The goal of keeping it for an academic purpose is a very good one. I think that will ultimately be what happens there. My sense is they’re not going to tear it down, they’ll repurpose it.
ODE: Is there anything else you think it’s important for students to know about?
PVD: Another huge issue is funding for the library. We’re still going through the process of cutting journal and serial titles, because they’re incredibly expensive. It costs the library a hell of a lot to get a subscription to some of those journals … That economic model is not viable even in the short term. Open source is the answer, or part of the answer. The hard part is getting that information to faculty members and getting them to think actively about the next time I have a manuscript that’s ready to be submitted somewhere, maybe I shouldn’t submit it to Journal X, because it costs my library $10,000, maybe I should submit it to an open source journal.
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