With weekly Vespers no longer offering free meals and weekend dining options shrinking, students have raised concerns that budgets for student services are being cut. As the Administration prepares to submit a draft of next year’s budget to the Board of Trustees, officials said that perceived cuts are in fact the result of a stable yet rigid budget.
According to Director of Financial Planning Ellen Stanton Milstone, the key to understanding Wesleyan’s budgetary process is to appreciate its focus on long-term planning. In addition to paying careful attention to budgets for the upcoming fiscal year and the following one, financial planning officials create a ten-year spending strategy that accounts for the most minor and major fluctuations in resources and national economic conditions.
“We compare the most realistic case with the worst possible case,” Milstone said. “We consider that insurance costs might go up, that the market might crash. We have assumptions and expectations about growth rates that help us predict how bad a bad case can be.”
According to Gabe Tabak ’06, a member of the WSA Finance and Facilities Committee, the University’s refusal to accommodate students’ demands for expanded dining services reflects the Administration’s policy of giving preference to long-term investments.
“The University is unwilling to invest everything in dining now because they’re banking on a new campus center opening in a few years,” Tabak said. “They want to avoid something expensive that will only last a few years. Instead they want to spend money on the new University Center.”
Despite changes in investment incomes from the University endowment, funding for individual offices remains consistent, according to Lisa Gates, Associate Dean of the College and Director of New Student Programs.
“We have not been deviating from past budgets,” she said. “We support office budgets at the levels they’ve been supported in the past. If we have a good year in revenues and investment we have a surplus which we allocate differently every year.”
The consequence of Wesleyan’s financial stability is that there is not much room for flexibility.
“We’ve done a fine job in setting out strategies,” Milstone said. “Not all universities work this way. We’ve created a roadmap for investment and to switch gears is difficult.”
Despite the changes in the operations of Vespers, overall the chaplains’ budgets have remained largely the same due to this budget rigidity.
“I think it is incorrect to say that there were cuts to the chaplains’ budget,” said the Catholic Chaplain Father Louis Manzo. “As far as I know, we have been allocated the same amount we had last year. The problem, I believe, is that we did not stay within the budget on some points and there was an administrative intervention to assure that we did not exceed the budget this year.”
Father Manzo said that he has not had to modify any of his programs for this semester due to this intervention.
Jewish Chaplain David Leipziger reported a minor change in his budget. One religion-based program, the Muslim Students Association, even received greater funds this year.
Protestant Chaplain Gary Comstock declined to comment for this article.
According to Gates, the increase in funding for the Muslim group was made possible not by revisions in the budget but by the allocation of surplus funds. The decision to endow the Muslim chaplaincy was made, according to Gates, to show support for Muslim students and their attempts to introduce new initiatives in programming.
Joel Bhuiyan ’06, co-chair of the Muslim Students Association, said that the investment of surplus money in the chaplains’ programs is a valuable supplement to the funding his group receives through the WSA. The WSA is financed by the student activity fee and is a separate source of funding from the budget.
According to Bhuiyan, the funds will be useful in helping to organize an inter-faith banquet, in conjunction with the Wesleyan Christian Fellowship, the Bayit, and Buddhist House. The event will be open to all students and will include student representatives from each faith group discussing their experiences and challenges at Wesleyan, as well as a panel of chaplains to field questions about their respective faiths.
“We hope that this program will decrease prejudices and increase understanding among students of these different faith groups, and among students who do not adhere to these faiths as well,” Bhuiyan said.
Another factor in the budget’s relative lack of flexibility is that 75 percent of resources are spent on salaries and benefits, two investments for which the University cannot cut corners.
“There’s a controversy about whether college should cost as much as it does,” Milstone said. “These are mostly people costs and they are the most difficult to affect.”
Milstone said that although the high percentage of funds devoted to salaries makes the budget more rigid, it is also a sign of sound investment strategies on the part of the Administration.
“All students support operations necessary to make their experience successful,” she said. “We focus more money on teaching and facilities. That’s what students would want.”
Unfortunately, students’ desires for expanded services collide with unwillingness to pay a higher tuition. Milstone said the University is usually reluctant to raise tuition.
“We could put more money into dining,” Milstone said. “But we don’t want students to graduate and be burdened with debt. [The students’] frustration is ours. Resources are limited. But the resources we have are focused in a way that’s very thoughtful. Students should take comfort in the fact that we’re not spending money randomly.”
According to Milstone, this is a particularly difficult time to accommodate such demands by the student body.
“[Allocation of funds not designated to faculty] is difficult now,” she said. “We’re in a different economic place.”
Ultimately, Milstone said, the budget meets the standards of not only financial planning officers and members of the Board, but the student body. She said the budget is not only a reflection of what students want, but is also a product of cooperation between students and faculty. She cited the essays on campus planning requested by President Bennet last semester as an example.
“The budget development process is an inclusive one,” Milstone said.
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