Linfield University is facing a $5 million budget gap. Changes will be made, and proposals from university officials are being made about how to close this gap. These changes include a voluntary separation incentive program (VSIP), reduction in force (RIF), and reorganization, elimination, and merger (REM). These changes will primarily affect the College of Arts and Sciences (CAS). REM will only affect CAS.

The exact estimate is 30 faculty positions and 49 staff positions to be cut from the whole school; these numbers include those who take the VSIP, so the exact number of layoffs is in flux. 

Linfield Provost Beth Concepción and Dean of CAS Gennie VanBeek made a draft proposal that they presented to faculty and staff.

“Gennie and I looked at various data points, and we put together over the past three months, and we put together a first draft of a proposal,” Concepción said. “I did not expect people to like it, but it has to be a starting point for a conversation, and it is a starting point for a conversation. And now people are talking about it, and faculty are getting together and talking about, okay, well, ‘we don’t like that, so we’re going to come up with this’. That’s exactly what we wanted it to do. We wanted it to spark the conversation, spark creativity.”

The proposal does list specific programs that could potentially be cut, such as literature, physics, international relations and philosophy, that were outlined in an OPB article. This has sparked controversy with students and faculty. It also has a suggestion for combining majors into super departments.

“In the School of Business, for example, you have seven different majors, but you have a common core model where there’s a lot of overlap, and you have faculty who have the ability to teach across different areas,” Concepción said. “So you have an accounting professor who can also teach finance, and you have a sport management professor who can also teach marketing. There’s more utility players … But we don’t take advantage of it as much because we’ve got these silos. But in a super department, you could have more cross-pollination, and then you reduce the need for as many faculty.”

However, these suggestions are not set in stone. Faculty had mixed feelings. Concepción urges faculty and staff to propose alternative ideas.

“Maybe it ends up we just do the traditional thing and just cut programs,” Concepción said. “But I would rather think about this differently. If we were going to build a college of arts and sciences that is not just good for the present, but is good for setting us up for future growth for the next five or 10 years, how would we build it?”

Students are concerned right now about their professors and majors. They’re expressing their own opinions. On May 2, students rallied outside of the Board of Trustees meeting, where decisions about the budget cuts were being discussed. Nearly 20 students showed up for this. On Monday, May 5, nearly 50 students rallied again outside of the faculty town hall meeting.

“I guess that was really just an effort to get students into the conversation,” junior Sage Henke said. “And then also, we knew that the Board of Trustees, knowing how students felt, would be really important because they are the ones making a lot of those budgetary decisions.”

Henke has been the student spearhead of the protests on campus. For her, the Linfield liberal arts education is what brought her here.

“That’s what makes this a really rich place,” Henke said. “There are so many people that are very passionate but about very different things, able to come together and share ideas.”

She and her fellow students just want to be informed about these decisions. They want transparency.

“The Board of Trustees members specifically took the time to talk with us and hear us out,” Henke said. “I don’t know what was talked about during that meeting afterwards, but there was that email sent out by the president’s office to students that morning … but just the fact that there was any communication to students at all felt good.”

Social media posts on Instagram are being shared with students’ frustrations, and urging students to sign a petition. Currently, the petition has 414 signatures. The goal is 450.

Students are worried that they won’t be able to complete their declared majors. All students who have declared a major, minor or certificate will graduate from Linfield University with that major, minor or certificate.

There is also concern that too much money is being allocated to athletics and student services expenditures. Throughout campus, fliers with student concerns address the student service expenditures. These fliers state, “In the past twelve years have seen a 146% increase in student services positions (from 13 to 32) and the simultaneous loss of 18 positions in CAS. There has been a $3.2 million increase in student services expenditures and a reduction of $3.18 million in instruction expenditures over the past twelve years. Despite this, no significant cuts to student services expenditures or hiring have been proposed.”

These claims are speculative, according to Linfield Vice President for Finance and Administration Mike Wenz.

“Of course (we would look at reducing numbers in student services),” Wenz said. “Everything is under consideration, everything, every area, every level on campus, is under consideration for evaluation. I expect we’ll wind up with reducing staffing, reducing expenditures in each of the functional areas.”

The university has been facing budget issues for nearly 13 years. This is because enrollment started to decline around 2012-2013. During this period, there were nearly 2500 students. Currently, there are nearly 1600 students. This issue, combined with tuition revenue, has put pressure on the budget.

The university has a $123 million endowment as of the last Board of Trustees meeting. Part of this money is the quasi-endowment.

“Over the course of the last 5, 6, 7, 8 years, we’ve used the quasi-endowment to fund a number of operational expenses, and essentially overspend our resources, our revenues and the quasi has been a big part of that,” Wenz said. “The quasi endowment has just under $10 million in it as of now, and our ability to fund budget deficits is going to be strained if we deplete the quasi endowment, so that adds some urgency to the budget challenges that we have right now.”

Townhalls are being scheduled. Students are encouraged to show up and voice their concerns.

“I would add encourage everybody to come to the town halls, please, do,” Wenz said. “The more transparent I can be, the easier my job is. I know people always ask for transparency. And that means people need to show up, right?”

Decisions are not completely decided, there is still a process that the proposal has to go through in order to be passed. For the initial draft of the proposal created by Concepción and VanBeek, feedback from CAS faculty is due May 23, revised proposal available May 30, second feedback due June 13, second revised proposal due June 20 and final feedback due July 4.

Sept. 30 is the deadline for official notification of the termination of faculty.