Efforts to promote public support gather momentum

by Sarah R. Buchholz, Chronicle staff

Keith Scaduto, a sophomore Psychology major from Freetown, and Jessica Laike, a sophomore Theater major from Dallas, were among about 20 students who volunteered to fold letters and stuff envelopes for the Theater Department on Feb. 26. The mailing asks alumni, parents, Five College theater staff, and friends and supporters of the department to write to legislators, University system officials and the Boston Globe to appeal for support of the University budget. The department is sending out 2,600 of the letters. (Sarah Buchholz photo)

niversity students, professional and support staff, and faculty are participating in a variety of efforts aimed at building support around the state for the Amherst campus in the coming fiscal year and beyond.

     As this year's state budget leaves the campus with a $16.7 million shortfall and an early retirement program threatens to substantially deplete the ranks of employees, including faculty, a number of groups have joined forces loosely to pursue common goals: increasing funding from the legislature and raising the state's awareness of the contributions of the campus and the University system to the commonwealth.

     "Everybody's out trying to mobilize and organize any way they can," said Dan Clawson, Massachusetts Society of Professors special vice president for campus mobilization. "For the most part, we're all looking for the same goals and we're all trying to find ways to [work toward them]."

      At a faculty and librarians' forum Feb. 21, professors discussed the impact cuts and proposed cuts are having on the academic mission and quality of the campus. Of particular concern was a proposal to merge five Humanities and Fine Arts departments into a single department of foreign languages.

     "What kind of a University are we going to have?" asked Daphne Patai, a professor in Spanish and Portuguese, of the proposal to meld her department with the departments of Asian and Germanic languages and literatures, French and Italian, and Comparative Literature.

     John Higginson, professor of History, called it a "horrible and atrocious prospect," citing the breadth of ideas covered in the individual departments as they now stand - cinema, literature, cultural studies, intellectual history, language, and critical thought - and expressing fear that this would be lost in an amalgamated department. Having such breadth "is not a personal whim," Higginson said. "It's part of the mandate that any college or university should have."

     Seshu Desu, head of Electrical and Computer Engineering, urged his colleagues to develop a plan that goes beyond saying "don't cut" by offering suggestions about where to put resources.

     Part of the meeting was devoted to discussing a teach-in scheduled for March 6-7 in which more than 300 instructors plan to present budget information to students and invite them to register to vote in their home districts, send letters to state legislators, and address envelopes to their parents in order to mail them information about the impact of budget cuts on the University.

     The letter tells parents they can help by writing to local legislators, Board of Trustees chair Grace Fey and President William M. Bulger.

     If students, parents and alumni are mobilized, "we can do a whole lot better," Clawson said. Organizers stressed that no student should feel coerced into participating, nor should students be rewarded for it, and, saying they did not want to use University funds for postage to mail the letters to parents, they started a collection for the postage fund, raising $750 at the meeting and another $700 subsequently.

     The teach-in is being organized by MSP and the faculty and graduate student arms of a coalition of students, faculty, staff and friends called Save UMass.

     Save UMass meets weekly Wednesdays at 3 p.m. in the Lincoln Campus Center. Steering committee member Sara Lennox said the Student Government Association and the Graduate Employee Organization are participating by registering in-state students to vote in their home districts and out-of-state students who wish to vote in Amherst.

     "SGA has been 'dorm-storming' at night with information about budget cuts, voter registration and legislators," Lennox said. "Our students don't just come from Western Mass.

     "After the teach-in, the next steps are getting to Boston and lobbying."

     Providing support for faculty and student activities and organizing an ongoing advocacy effort on behalf of the University has been a group of staff in University Advancement.

     "Our goal is to try to prevent further budget cuts and then eventually as resources allow, to position the University to access a larger portion of the state budget," said Richard Conner, assistant vice chancellor for State Government and Community Relations. A committee of State Government Relations, Alumni Relations, Communications and Marketing, and Development staff "has specifically worked on these themes and messages," he said. One message, "Your University is at risk," is designed to alert friends of the campus to the potential threat to the campus.

     MSP reports that the current size of the tenure-system faculty, 990, is set to decline by more than 10 percent next fall, and Faculty Senate and MSP officers are concerned that the faculty may be unable to deliver the curriculum in the coming fiscal year.

     Advancement staff have been meeting with representatives from other campus groups, including Save UMass, the Faculty Senate, MSP and student groups, to connect them with resources that will enhance their advocacy efforts. In mid-February, the committee launched a Web site (www.umass.edu/actnow/), which provides links to information about legislators, registering to vote, the budget, and ways in which the University contributes to the commonwealth, as well as messages about what the University needs and a recent editorial by Bulger.

     "We need to get the parents out there," said Kat Eldred, director of Marketing. "It's really the parents who are going to have the passionate pleas because they have the pocketbooks."

     "The basic message is 'call, write, visit your legislator,'" Conner said.

     "UMass is the best-kept secret in the commonwealth," said Cheryl L. Dukes, coordinator of Advocacy Programs. "We need not to be a secret anymore.

     "We're putting together a not just a budget message but a broader message about how UMass powers the commonwealth. We in Advocacy Programs have been working on this for a couple of years, but this is something that needs to be a priority for the University, and now people are more interested in working more as a collective because they feel UMass is at risk."