No cut is the right cut.
Hello, I’m Zach McMahon, the editor-in-chief of the Independent. Our staff has been working on this issue to try to put a face to the proposed $2.6 million in cuts to the Clark College budget which will take effect in 2016-17. We want students, staff, faculty and administration to see the real-life consequences facing us.
Nobody has the wisdom to figure out the right answer to this challenge because there isn’t one. Administrators have models, formulas, predictions and rubrics to rely on in their efforts to come up with the best potential cuts, but plenty of people are going to disagree with their rationale.
No matter what the final decisions are, people are going to be negatively affected.
We are not taking a stance on which cuts are the right ones. We just want to contextualize this difficult issue.
The Indy staff has reported extensively on the budget deficit. We aim to give a voice to affected programs while remembering that the college has limited funding.
I find it inappropriate to criticize the college’s decision to over-enroll students in 2009-10 when the economy was so poor that people could not find work and instead turned to education. As Vice President of Instruction Tim Cook said, “We expanded all over the place.”
What was the college supposed to do?
But if the college is faced with having to make another set of cuts that would be a different story.
For the future the college should plan better to avoid the chaos we currently are experiencing.
In the end, the college is going to have to cut from somewhere. This issue is hard to deal with, but the truth is, we must face it.
