Chaos! Civil war! It's department against department, faction against faction - and no, we're not talking about Iraq. The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences is on the brink of a full-blown academic pissing match that threatens to soak everyone at UF. Bring an umbrella.
It all started in September, when UF unveiled its five-year plan to get CLAS out of debt. Budgets were cut, programs slashed and department heads targeted for removal. Now students and faculty are in an uproar and, predictably, the administration is scrambling to cover its own ass.
CLAS Dean Neil Sullivan says the five-year plan is "on hold," but no one - not Student Government, not the Faculty Senate, not UF President Bernie Machen - has proposed an alternative. And with good reason. Unless CLAS' budget expands, there are no good solutions to this problem.
Even worse, it seems the cupboards are bare, meaning any new money has to come from tuition hikes. But if Machen has his way - if he convinces the Legislature to let UF set its own rates - there's no telling where CLAS will end up on the administration's list of spending priorities.
That could change today. At 7 p.m., Machen will present a proposal for "academic enhancement" in the Reitz Union Auditorium. If he promises to spend the lion's share of any new revenues on CLAS, students might finally have a reason to hear him out. If he doesn't, whatever trust remains between the administration and UF will shrink even further.
CLAS is the university's biggest college. It provides more than half of UF's credit hours. And for at least three years, it's been overspending its budgets - all with Machen's tacit approval. He even let the debt accumulate for two years before hiring a provost. To claim now that it's not his responsibility isn't just irresponsible. It's downright sneaky.
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