UNC’s centers on the front lines of budget cuts

The institutions on the front lines of the University’s budget struggles are feeling the persistent pain associated with drastic cuts.

For these specialized centers, budget cuts are nothing new. Many have sustained double-digit cuts for years.

But the latest round has rendered some incapable of meeting past standards of outreach and activity.

“It’s like trying to put together two nickels to make a quarter,” said Joseph Jordan, director of the Sonja Haynes Stone Center for Black Culture and History, one of several centers slashed by more than 20 percent this year.

For the Institute of African American Research, the cuts nearly proved fatal.

Fatimah Jackson, former director of the institute, said in an email that the provost’s office threatened to shut down the institute in early summer but reversed its decision in mid-June.

The institute was dealt nearly a 40 percent budget cut this year after surviving a 52 percent cut in 2010 that Jackson said permanently denied it the ability to hire full-time staff.

“I anticipate that this year’s budget cuts will continue to have an adverse effect on the quality and quantity of programs that the (institute) is able to initiate,” Jackson wrote in the email.

Carol Tresolini, associate provost for academic initiatives, said the initial decision to eliminate the institute came because administrators didn’t know if all of the centers would be able to be preserved.

The state legislature laid out the criteria to be followed when allocating budget cuts, Tresolini said.

“Reducing funding for centers and institutes was at the top of the list,” she said, adding that the legislature dictated the need for disproportionate cuts to these areas.

Tresolini said administrators took into account the ability of centers to solicit funding from other sources on and off campus. The Stone Center was forced to do just that.

The center’s leaders assumed the cuts would be ongoing and have been planning for them during the past three years, Jordan said.

The cuts have reduced the center’s staff and increased its need to work with other departments on campus.

“It’s not easy because other departments don’t have a lot of money either,” Jordan said.

“It’s not a solution but simply an approach to the problem that allows us to continue offering some programs that otherwise might fade out,” he said.

Some of these events include the center’s first exhibition, beginning Sept. 8, on black U.S. soldiers, which will be possible only with the support of at least six other programs and departments.

Other centers have lost the ability to support old projects, even with support from other sources.

The Carolina Women’s Center lost the ability to maintain its HAVEN Program as a result of the latest round of cuts.

According to the center’s website, HAVEN is a campus-wide initiative to increase support for student survivors of violent and abusive relationships.

“It’s hard to no longer be a part of something you helped create because you don’t have the time or resources,” said Donna Bickford, director of the center.

The Office of the Dean of Students and Counseling and Wellness Services, which have helped support HAVEN in the past, will now take it over completely, Bickford said.

Over the past three years, the women’s center has survived more than a 60 percent budget cut. It was dealt a 32 percent cut from last year.

Cuts slashed the center’s library budget to zero, preventing it from updating the materials in its reading and resource room that primarily focused on gender-related issues, Bickford said.

“When you compromise our ability to do work, you make it harder for us to promote the topics that we do,” Bickford said.

Although many of the centers affected by budget cuts promote discussion of issues such as diversity, racial and gender equity and minority issues, Tresolini said cuts were apportioned regardless of a center’s relation to these topics.

“It was more about structuring the overall cut to preserve all of these centers,” Tresolini said.

The University still places a high priority on diversity, Tresolini said, and did the best it could to minimize the impact that budget cuts would have on programs, including ones dealing with diversity issues.

“The good news is, we didn’t lose any of these centers or institutes,” she said.

Contact the University Editor at university@dailytarheel.com.