By Signe K. Skinion

SIUC students may lose favorite programs and staff members as a result of the University’s 1997 budget guideline changes, Graduate and Professional Student Council members said at their meeting Wednesday .

GPSC President Bill Karrow said at the meeting that SIUC Chancellor John Guyon’s budget guidelines for the 1997 budget year are going to cause massive changes within the University.

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Right now, from what I have heard, Student Legal Services may not receive an increase next year and may be dropped from the program altogether, Karrow said. I urge everyone to voice opposition to this cut because SLS is an important program for graduates and undergraduates.

Karrow said he has talked with administrators and said he believes a hiring freeze also is imminent.

Basically, I have been informed that 75 staff positions may not be around next year, Karrow said. They have made a big showing that faculty is considered staff. Also, we will see some elimination of programs real quick.

Karrow said another problem he understands is with cost efficiency within the University’s administration.

They (administrators) are talking about spending $552,000 on an outside consultant to find out why the administration is not cost efficient, Karrow said.

GPSC member Ralph Granger said an independent agency evaluating the University may be necessary.

One of the biggest problems is we have the University evaluating the University, and that just doesn’t work when it comes to the administration, Granger said.

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Karrow said the guidelines offer more answers than previously released by the administration but said there are still questions that need to be answered especially how it concerns students.

It tells us we’re going to lose a lot of money, but it doesn’t tell us how, Karrow said. We’re looking at a definite loss of $8.6 million plus another possible $5 million on top of that. Also a faculty hiring freeze looks more like a reality.

The guidelines state that University base reductions will cost approximately $4.5 million, the contingency reserve will cost approximately $3 million and the tuition waivers will cost $1.2 million.

Karrow said another $5 million could possibly be required to cover maintenance of assets that includes faculty sabbaticals and professional development. But administrators have not confirmed that the additional amount will be required.

I think they’re scared to say that on top of $8.6 million they’re going to add another $5 million, Karrow said.

The council also voted to counter the Undergraduate Student Government’s recent proposals to increase student fees for funding campus organizations and create an advisory board to monitor Student Programming Council spending.

Mark Terry, author of the counter plan and vice president of Graduate School Affairs, said the council did not agree with all aspects of the USG plan.

These two issues were separated by USG but are fundamentally linked to one another because of their nature, Terry said.

Terry said the resolution requests one year for GPSC and USG members to monitor SPC funding and spending. He said the two groups should be able to come to an agreement on the amount needed to fund SPC after observing these procedures.