Spring 2002

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Around the Pond

TO BOSTON, WITH FLOWERS The faculty’s “SaveUMass” effort relies on urgent persuasion

by Mary Carey

STATE SENATOR MICHAEL KNAPIK, A Westfield Republican and consistent supporter of UMass, said this winter he was puzzled by claims that the university has never been in worse shape than it is now – even as those claims were being expressed in a tide of faculty protest unprecedented in the recent history of the campus. One example of that unprecedented protest is the direct appeal that the Massachusetts Society of Professors (MSP) paid to have placed on page 3 of this magazine. The grassroots effort that faculty are calling “SaveUMass” was begun in February by a handful of professors alarmed, they said, not only by the effects of current-year budget cuts of $17.5 million, but by the prospect of losing dozens of full-time faculty positions to the state’s Early Retirement Incentive program. The effort quickly mobilized thousands. On March 6, some 400 faculty led sessions that generated over 10,000 letters urging support for the campus. Over 2,500 students, faculty, and staff rallied on campus to call attention to the crisis. A newly created website, saveumass.org, received 50,000 hits within the first few weeks. In April, plans were being made for busloads of supporters to travel to Boston to personally lobby legislators. Senator Knapik, pointing to increases in the UMass budget in recent years, expressed the surprise of many legislators who wondered how things could really be that bad. ROBERT PAYNTER ’75G, ’80G, an anthropology professor and secretary of the MSP, says that conveying the university’s predicament to legislators is a multi-layered proposition. Faculty do need to acknowledge the improved appropriations of the 1990s, says Paynter. But they also need to remind legislators that it wasn’t until this year that the campus had inched back to the relative level of funding in 1988, and that in the meantime, faculty and staff have dwindled and buildings deteriorated. Despite the campus’s diversion of up to $10 million per year to deferred maintenance in the ’90s, the backlog at the beginning of this year was an estimated $300 million. But the overriding factor making this the worst crisis in memory, says Paynter, is “the profile of a professorate being almost to the point, if not past the point, of retiring – and then the major solution to the budget crisis being an early retirement plan. “So whereas in the 1980s, when the university found itself in fiscal crisis, we said ‘We’ll scrimp on the physical side, but we’ll keep the human part together’ – that’s not happening this time. “It’s one thing to teach in a classroom where some of the lights are out,” says Paynter. “It’s another to not be able to hold the class because there’s no professor.” The projected loss of faculty by this fall is 10 percent. The loss of full-time faculty since 1987, the MSP estimates, will be nearly 30 percent. Some departments and programs are hit harder than others.“We had 27 people on the payroll last fall and we could have 17 next fall,” says sociology professor and SaveUMass organizer Dan Clawson of the situation in his department. “We teach over 3,000 students each semester, and there are 639 majors; there is no way 17 faculty could do for them what 27 did.” ACCORDING TO REPRESENTATIVE ELLEN STORY, Democrat from Amherst and one of the most passionate proponents of the university in the Legislature, the stars had lined up for UMass in the 1990s. “We had Thomas Birmingham as president of the Senate, put there by his mentor, Bill Bulger, who went on to – of all places – the presidency of UMass,” Story says. “At the same time we had Stan Rosenberg” – ’77 alumnus and state senator from Amherst – “as chair of Ways and Means. Those are circumstances that will probably never happen again.” Bulger, of course, is still president; Birmingham is still senate president, although he is also running for governor now. And Rosenberg, though he no longer heads the Senate’s budget-writing committee, continues to doggedly promote the university. But everything else has changed. The longest period of economic expansion in the country’s history has ended and the state is facing likely annual deficits of more than $2 billion for the next two years. So although, as Knapik notes, UMass’s supporters in the legislature were able to make significant strides in recent years – almost closing the chasm that opened when funding was slashed during the last severe economic downturn, from 1988-92 – those fiscally more robust times are clearly over. Rosenberg and others warn that all of the gains UMass made in the ’90s could be undone in the next two years, and that with public agencies across the state competing for dwindling funds, supporters will need to make a strong case if the university is to weather the downturn. That is where SaveUMass, like the Act Now campaign headed by campus advocacy staff (see UMass Gatherings, page 36), hopes to come in. Rosenberg, Story, and other committed legislators already do yeoman’s work on behalf of UMass, but many of the state’s 160 representatives and 40 senators are less focused on the university. Lobbying those legislators is a key priority of SaveUMass. Any mention of lobbying on Beacon Hill by students, especially, is likely to spark recollection of the time a decade ago that UMass demonstrators trampled flowerbeds outside the State House. This, it’s generally agreed, called attention to UMass in a negative way. This time, says Clawson, demonstrators will bebearing flowers. As much as possible in a mass movement that has so quickly emerged, efforts are being made to address legislators in ways that will persuade them of the long-term benefits of investing in UMass. Over two-thirds of UMass grads, after all, remain in the state, contribute to its economy, and vote. AREA LEGISLATORS AGREE THAT THE single most effective strategy for the university’s supporters, including the 200,000 alumni of the system who live in the state, is to appeal directly to their district representatives with accounts of their UMass experiences. At a sparsely attended but warmly praised legislators’ day on campus April 9, Senator Rosenberg told a gathering of students and faculty he was proud of their work, saying the letter-writing campaign was proving effective on Beacon Hill. “The quality of the (lobbying) effort this time is leagues ahead,” the Hampshire Gazette quoted Rosenberg as saying. “Colleagues tell me of receiving 100 or 150 letters, all of them original, none of them canned. They describe them as heartfelt and compelling stories. Thank you all for this quality effort.” Representative Story says she, too, had been impressed by the letters. One student wrote about fears for her personal safety now that the escort service has been cut. Another said she can’t get into the history classes she needs to complete her major. A grad student in psychology wrote of teaching “a class with over 350 people in it in a dirty classroom with tiles falling from the ceiling.” Story believes that advocacy on behalf of UMass should be a regular part of the university calendar: “Like Homecoming Weekend,” she says. Bob Paynter, himself an alumnus, believes alumni will rise to that challenge. “UMass alums have rallied around the university before,” says Paynter. “They will recognize not only the dimensions of the crisis, but the spirit and the loyalty and the enthusiasm and the love for the place that is motivating us – the same spirit that moved people to stand by the university in the past.”

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NEVER GIVE UP

BUDGET IMPACTS

NEW CHANCELLOR ANNOUNCED

PRESIDENT'S ANNUAL APPEAL

TO BOSTON, WITH FLOWERS

UMASS DAY

E-WISH YOU WERE HERE

UP-TO-THE-MINUTEMAN

IT'S A MICROORGANISM'S LIFE -

SNAPSHOT: FREEZE FRAME

CHANCELLOR WILLIAMS: LARGER IMAGE

WE HAVE A WINNER: LARGER IMAGE

UP-TO-THE-MINUTEMAN: LARGER IMAGE

HIGHLIGHTS: "Gone when we got there" / Dept. of distinctions / Hail and Farewell

LARGER IMAGE: Snapshot