The UW-Madison Academic Staff Assembly passed a resolution Monday calling recent budget cuts to the UW System too large.
In October state legislators announced $65.7 million in cuts to the UW System to make up for a lapse of expected state revenue.
The UW System accounts for 38 percent of total cuts included in the state's lapse. About $25 million of these cuts will go to UW-Madison over the next two years.
Heather Daniels, chair of the Academic Staff Executive Committee, said the Assembly passed the legislation out of concern that staff members' workloads would be too heavy if cuts force the university to fire employees.
"Offices and departments often lose staff and are unwilling to give up anything that they do," Daniels said.
"So academic staff especially tend to feel the burden of having to do the same with a lot less."
The resolution says cuts to the UW System are disproportionate to cuts to other state-funded agencies.
Daniels said not all the agencies affected by the lapse were considered equally. While the state refrained from making cuts that would inhibit the "core mission" of some agencies, Daniels said no cuts to the UW System were excluded by this criteria.
"There was nothing excluded from the UW System, but clearly we cannot teach, you guys cannot learn, we cannot do research without infrastructure," Daniels said.
Vice Chancellor for Administration Darrell Bazzell said there is currently a "major league effort" throughout the university to decrease cuts to the system.
Last week, the UW-Madison Faculty Senate passed a resolution advocating for smaller cuts to the UW System.
The state Senate is holding a hearing on Tuesday about the lapses at which Chancellor David Ward will testify on behalf of the university.
