The UW System Board of Regents removed a presentation from its upcoming meeting that originally allowed system chancellors to speak about the impact statewide budget cuts have had on their campuses.
Before the removal, UW System President Ray Cross asked each chancellor in an email to put together a one-page synopsis of their campus situation that was “factual, not whiny.” The chancellors would then share a five-minute summary at the meeting Thursday and Friday at UW-Green Bay.
UW System spokesperson Alex Hummel said the presentation was canceled due to time constraints and a greater focus on the local level.
Each school is assigned a “regent buddy,” Hummel explained, who will meet face-to-face with campus, community and economic partners in the next several months to assess the cuts’ impacts. UW-Madison spokesperson Meredith McGlone said she was not aware of any current plans for such meetings between the university’s administration and three regent buddies.
Hummel said the eventual goal is to disseminate the chancellors’ written summaries to the public, and this switch in focus to the local level would make the discussion surrounding the cuts “more expansive” and not confined to a meeting where viewership is limited.
However, several Democratic members of the state Joint Committee on Finance spoke out against the regents’ removal of the presentation, arguing it prevents public discussion on the issue.
In a Wednesday release, state Sen. Jon Erpenbach, D-Middleton, said Wisconsinites are concerned about the “dramatic” cuts.
“Everyone knows this is not an issue where it is acceptable for each campus to just hand the Regents a stack of papers,” Erpenbach said in the release. “So why would the Regents eliminate an opportunity to educate themselves—and the public—on how the cuts will be carried out?”
Erpenbach and three other Democratic state legislators sent a letter to the Board of Regents, requesting that they inform the Joint Committee on Finance about plans to facilitate an “adequate” public discussion on the implementation of the budget cuts and their effect on each campus.
Several chancellors at universities around the system, including UW-Madison Chancellor Rebecca Blank, did not comment on the presentation’s cancellation.