Faculty and other staffers at Brooklyn College are pushing back against the latest round of budget cuts at the City University of New York, faulting the campus president for not deflecting the blow.
At a union meeting last week, 59% percent of 207 people in attendance voted “no confidence” in President Michelle Anderson’s leadership, minutes show. Fewer than a quarter approved of her job performance.
The group represented a small share of the more than 1,000-member faculty union chapter — and significant discontent during a period of intense belt-tightening on campus.
“To take a vote of no confidence is a measure of last resort, of desperation, when I think faculty feel like things are really dire and there’s little recourse,” said Joseph Etin, an American studies prof.
The vote responded to what critics consider a willingness to accept cuts and attrition of staff and faculty, the need for greater budget transparency and a lack of vision for the institution, PSC-CUNY chapter leader Carolina Bank-Muñoz told the Daily News.
Anderson is tasked with developing a plan by Thursday to absorb $8 million in cuts over the next couple of years.
Brooklyn College is in a tight financial spot.
In a Dec. 10 letter to faculty and staff, Anderson said the state did not keep up with growing costs of labor and operations for years. The college’s financial woes were worsened by a devastating loss of revenue as Brooklyn College lost 20% of its student headcount.
“Underfunding over time and rapid enrollment loss created a structural deficit that now poses an existential crisis,” Anderson wrote.
To address those issues, CUNY last spring mandated that Brooklyn College develop a $9.3 million savings plan to reduce the structural deficit. The latest round of cuts will shave an additional $3.5 million off the campus budget this school year, plus $4.5 million next year.
The library has already been operating on a reduced schedule and the cafeteria closed for at least this semester, while a rat infestation plagues offices and departments, The News previously reported.
“Faculty and administrators can work together to change the rules of the system and enhance state funding,” Anderson wrote, “but thereafter, we must work together to operate within our budget.
“To pretend otherwise — to decry the consequences of state fiscal policy and dramatically reduced enrollment, demanding that the administration repeal those consequences as if by magic wand — takes a stand for an empty political purity and helps not one iota with the critical work in front of us.”
After the vote, multiple chairs came to Anderson’s defense. Both the chairs of the accounting and marketing departments circulated open letters expressing gratitude for the college president.
“I don’t think the vote was representative of the overall sentiment of faculty and staff at Brooklyn College,” MJ Robinson, chair of the media department, told The News. “She’s leading through an impossible time for all college presidents and despite the cuts that most of the union’s position, by their own admission, is she can’t do anything about.”
Some union members, like anthropology associate professor Naomi Schiller, want to see Anderson back potential revenue raisers like a state bill to charge property taxes at Columbia University and New York University.
“There’s nothing left to cut,” said Schiller. “We’re just really operating on a shoestring [budget] already and things are crumbling … We are willing to stand up to our boss and say no more cuts. She does not seem like she’s willing to stand up to her bosses and say no more cuts.”
