Simon presents budget to ASMSU in joint meeting

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MSU President Lou Anna K. Simon presented the university’s budget to ASMSU at a joint meeting March 5 and explained how a shortage of state funds has affected it.

ASMSU is MSU’s undergraduate student government.

“There’s not a gray area about what’s going to have to happen, so she’s letting students know that there are tough times ahead,” Student Assembly Chairperson Michael Webber said. “She’s being frank about it.”

The budget information has been available on the MSU Office of Planning and Budgets’ Web site, opbweb.msu.edu.

“The state chose to put money in corrections rather than education,” Simon said. “If they had put it in education, tuition would be 25 percent less.”

According to the updated budget, MSU would have to cut 703 faculty members or raise tuition 8.9 percent, but Simon said the university wouldn’t go to either extreme.

Although Simon has talked with state officials about these budget changes, she said it was important that students know about them, too.

“It’s good for more students to have access to (the information), which is also why we put it on the budget Web site, so that anybody can look at the information,” she said.

Simon said the university has three goals during the current economic crisis: remain a top 100 university in the world, build Michigan’s future and keep land-grant values.

“What the state chooses to do with the stimulus package for education is uncertain,” she said. “There’s going to be some pushing and shoving between us and the state.”

Funding has been taken away from research universities, but not community colleges, because displaced workers are going back to school and receiving a quick education in community colleges, Simon said.

This was the second joint meeting between both ASMSU assemblies.

Academic Assembly deals with academic issues, such as tuition and book costs. Student Assembly deals with nonacademic issues and represents ASMSU to administration and government bodies.

The goal of the joint meetings is to collaborate and communicate, Webber said.

“It allowed both assemblies to interact and talk about the issues and to bring a common voice to the issues,” he said.

Academic Assembly Chairperson Brad McDonald said it was important ASMSU talk with Simon.

“It’s not just a handful of students who are concerned about these issues,” he said. “I think we showed to President Simon … that there’s a large group of students who are engaged and concerned.”

Simon said there was nothing ASMSU could do directly but recommended it take concerns to legislators and stress the importance of higher education.

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