amendments were offered and accepted by the author of the report. A reference to possibly using students to oversee labs was removed. The section dealing with indirect costs was amended to avoid stating specific percentages, and a statement was added to the beginning of the report noting that these were initial ideas subject to change.

The report, with these amendments, was approved by the Senate with 14 voting in favor, none opposed and one abstention.

Below is the amended text of the Ad Hoc Committee Report approved by the Senate.

Report of the Senate ad hoc Budget Crisis Committee

Note: These are initial ideas and subject to change when more budgetary data are made available to faculty.

Summary: KSU is literally near the bottom of the entire nation, not just Kentucky, HBCUs or Land Grant Institutions, when it comes to funding instruction, with less than 13% of our budget devoted to instruction, down from 28% just a few years ago. Furthermore, there have been a number of faculty who have voluntarily separated from the University within the past year or two and have not been replaced, virtually all academic units are understaffed, and some academic units are now in danger of losing their program accreditation due to inadequate staffing. Therefore, while KSU might still be overstaffed when it comes to administrators and support staff, that is clearly not the case with faculty, and cutting teaching positions should be the absolute last thing we should consider in addressing the budget crisis. To be blunt: nothing could possibly have a more adverse impact on our students than indiscriminate elimination of faculty positions, and any such move will have devastating consequences on student success and enrollment for years to come. This is a university, not a business; nothing could possibly be more important to a university than faculty teaching students—every other function of this and every other university is secondary to that. The administration and staff positions in some units have continued to expand even when enrollments have not, and “right-sizing” the administration has been put off long enough; it’s time we got serious about making cuts in these areas.

Faculty Senate would like to suggest that before discussions on budget cuts even begin, we should take full inventory of all KSU resources and budget items to accurately account for real costs, including savings from vacant positions—administrative, staff and faculty—that still have active budget lines. For example, University College, Student Engagement and Campus Life and Student Success have already lost a total of 24 positions. Make sure that before we talk of “eliminating positions” further, we first take into account all of the positions that have already been “eliminated” by voluntary separation from the University in the past year.

Elimination of Non-Teaching Positions: