Deans Answer Few Budget Questions

Administrators in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences did little to allay students’ fears about impending cuts at yesterday’s town hall meeting hosted by the Undergraduate Council. The meeting came two weeks after FAS Dean Michael D. Smith announced that a broad restructuring would be necessary to close a $220 million deficit over the next two years.

Though the meeting was billed as an open forum for students to “join the dialogue” on the College’s future plans, Smith, joined only by College Dean Evelynn M. Hammonds, revealed no specifics about changes to come—except that students should expect further notice about the remaining $143 million of cost-cutting measures come May 11.

University President Drew G. Faust, who was slated to complete the night’s trifecta of administrators, pulled out due to illness, according to UC president Andrea R. Flores ’10.

Throughout the night, Smith and Hammonds declined to provide details, stating repeatedly that it is too soon to expect answers from the administration.

“It may seem like an eternity [of waiting] for you guys,” Smith said. “But this organization is so big, and getting it to move fast takes a bit of effort.”

The May 11 announcement is expected to outline imminent budget reductions in a carefully presented manner.

“We’ve reached a point where we need to talk about the big ideas,” Hammonds said from her perch atop the table to roughly 50 students in attendance, emphasizing that the six working groups Smith charged with proposing possible cuts would strive to be as transparent as possible.

And Hammonds said figuring out how to achieve this level of transparency would be the “very first thing” on the agenda.

But it remains unclear what form restructuring efforts would take.

“We’ve been looking for efficiencies at this point,” Smith said, adding in response to a question that eliminating or merging academic departments has not yet been discussed.

In response to a series of questions about ongoing cuts—such as the 25 percent reduction in House budgets—Smith and Hammonds pointed to various instances where the administration had elected to keep certain commitments.

Smith insisted that the reductions in faculty hiring still left Harvard in an “aggressive” position relative to its peers and that FAS will go ahead with 19 junior faculty searches next year.

But with no senior faculty searches on the horizon, this figure—about half the average over the last 10 years—marks a dramatic shift from what Faust termed in a recent interview as the Faculty’s “very fast” growth.

“I think we’ve done a fairly good job of making as minimal an impact on those areas as possible,” Smith said.

A significant number of the night’s questions from members of the Student Labor Action Movement raised concerns that staff would bear the brunt of budget cuts in the form of mass layoffs, but both Smith and Hammonds rejected the notion that the upper echelons at Harvard were not shouldering a fair part of the burden.

Smith refused to admit that cuts were targeted at “low-pay workers,” insisting that savings from administrators pay cuts would be negligible relative to the gaping deficit.

Hammonds also said that she hopes the Ad Board Review Committee’s report—which she received March 6—will be presented before the Faculty in the fall.

—Staff writer Athena Y. Jiang can be reached at ajiang@fas.harvard.edu.

—Staff writer June Q. Wu can be reached at junewu@fas.harvard.edu.