The Faculty Association’s request for a 21 percent compensation increase is a large demand, and we think it is deserved, but a little untimely and selfish.

By Gus Bode

The Physical Plant workers laid off last spring would probably rather have their jobs right now, students paying higher tuition would rather not and the state would probably rather have proper funding.

But we can’t all have our druthers.

During this drought of funds, when everyone is being hit in one way or another, the request for an increase of 21 percent is almost laughable.

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We understand the 21 percent is an opening gamut, and it is in the nature of bargaining to request more than you actually expect. But doesn’t the thought of former SIU employees standing in the unemployment line waiting to pick up their new paycheck, one that barely covers the necessities, pull at your heartstrings? Or students, already strapped for cash, walking a thin line between quitting and hanging on for another semester?

This is a nationwide problem right now – colleges across America are raising tuition and looking for ways to cut costs. It’s not SIU shortchanging professors; it’s an epidemic. Anywhere you go, there’s bound to be salary disputes right now, and we think loyalty to this University should take precedence over a high salary increase.

Maybe faculty aren’t getting paid the standards other schools have set, but they receive a paycheck from this University that puts food on their plates and a roof over their head each month. That alone should inspire some sort of sympathy toward the budget plight.

Loyalty is not kicking the University when it is down.

It’s not a matter of being unappreciated. We recognize the faculty’s accomplishments and hard work, and understand that they have been operating under peer institutions’ pay scales, but poor timing and budget concerns make the request unfathomable.

We don’t deny that faculty deserve an increase, and the Physical Plant workers deserve their jobs back, students deserve to have tuition lowered and the state probably even deserves to have money in its pocket again, but the point is – the chances of any of this happening are unlikely.

Good luck to the faculty in their salary increase endeavors. But we respectfully disagree that they seek to stake a claim on funds when everyone else is making sacrifices in the name of this University.

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