JOMC budget cuts to hit hard

With at least $242,000 in cuts to make by July 1, the School of Journalism and Mass Communication will be forced to join other schools and departments across campus in reducing the number of faculty and course offerings.

The $242,000 would represent a 5 percent cut — the lowest projected for the 2011-12 fiscal year as the state faces a budget shortfall of between $2.4 billion and $2.7 billion.

“In former years, what happened was the provost would say, ‘Let me know what you would do if it was 5 percent, 10 percent,’” said Jean Folkerts, the school’s dean. “But you didn’t actually have to do it. This time, we actually had to do it.”

If the cuts reach the second and third level, they will total $544,000 and $846,000, respectively.

The school has laid off one person, and the first cut has also halted the search for a new faculty member. Folkerts said another person retiring June 30 won’t be replaced.

“We’ll cut about $20,000 in supplies, faculty travel, any place we can sort of trim around,” she said.

She said higher level cuts would cause the school to eliminate more part-time and full-time faculty and staff.

Winston Cavin, a lecturer in the school, said the cuts will hurt students, as the school has already made the obvious cuts.

“This isn’t traditional hand-wringing,” he said in an e-mail. “The so-called easy cuts are long gone.”

Paul O’Connor, a fixed-term faculty member, said he and other adjunct professors know that the cuts will be hardest on them.

“This is obviously a concern,” he said. “Many of us who are fixed-term faculty are people in the J-School who left the newspaper business as it died and continued to die. We kind of hoped that we would finish out our working days in this job, even though they are part-time jobs.”

Joe Bob Hester, an associate professor, said the difficulty comes when trying to find places to cut.

“We’re one of those most efficiently operating units on this campus, in terms of the numbers of students we teach with the faculty that we have,” he said.

“But because we’re so efficient, there’s nothing to cut.”

Faculty members are also concerned that more cuts could stop students from graduating on time.

O’Connor said the school usually asks him in mid-February what times would work for scheduling his courses in the fall — but they haven’t asked yet.

“No one in fixed-term has heard anything,” he said, referring to contracted faculty.

Cutting professors will result in reduced course sections and offerings, Folkerts said. She added that seniors this year had difficulty getting into courses they needed to graduate.

“We substituted some electives for them so they could graduate,” she said.

But the school can only do it for a limited number of students.
“It would ruin our accreditation,” she said.

Sarah Murphy, a junior in the school, said she needs five more classes before she graduates next spring. She is concerned she won’t be able to get into them.

“Luckily, I’m a communications double major, so I would unfortunately just have to graduate without a journalism major, which would be really disappointing, because this is what I’m really interested in,” she said.

She said she would not want to complete an additional semester.
“It’s just not a feasible option,” she said.

Contact the University Editor at university@dailytarheel.com.