11:20 a.m. —

University police were told doors opened at 11:30 a.m. After initial confusion, people are inside. Two security guys with earpieces are flanking the front row.

12:00 p.m. —

President Dan Mote, VP for Administrative Affairs Ann Wylie, and Provost Nariman Farvardin will be answering questions starting now. Senate Chair Elise Miller-Hooks is moderating.

12:01 p.m. –

Mote makes introductory remarks: “We’ve tried our best to protect our people. There’s no perfect plan. We did our best to try to distribute this the best we could.”

12:03 p.m. –

Staffer: Those making less than $30,00 a year “will suffer quite a bit.” We think the spreading out of salary reductions idea is pretty good.

Mote: Two furlough days for those making less than $30,000 is less than 1 percent of their salary. That was the best we could do.

SGA President Steve Glickman: “This university prides itself on access, but we remind you that access without quality is not quality at all.” Why don’t students have a seat at the negotiating table, like at Towson or other USM universities?

Farvardin: My advisory committee has student representatives. All significant changes will go through various committees that have student representatives on them.

12:05 p.m. –

Staffer: Why are closure days split up between winter and spring break?

Wylie: Friday during Spring Break is a payday, we have to have people to give out paychecks.

Malcolm Harris, student who ran for SGA president last year: How can you ask everyone to pitch in when there’s no accountability or transparency?

Mote: The budget is in the library, making it more available would be very expensive.

Wylie: We have full transparency, much of budget is on our website. “It’s a very complicated budget.”

Malcolm Harris: “That’s just not true.”

12: 15 p.m. –

Staffer: Would you consider a 4-day work week? It would cut back on overhead, utilities, etc.

Wylie: We don’t have enough classrooms to move to a 4-day week and people expect offices to be open on Fridays. Some employees will be able to work 4-day weeks, discuss it with your supervisor.

Elliott Morris, senior VP of SGA: Why was I escorted out of your cabinet meeting this morning? And if the budget is so convoluted and confusing, how do you discuss it amongst yourselves? (Tries to continue but is cut off by time limit)

Mote: Most would agree I should be able to meet with my direct reports. And the budget isn’t secret. Everyone’s salaries are in The Diamondback. Click for 2009 salary guide.

12:20 p.m. –

Mark Leone, faculty member in the department of Anthropology: How will we know how much money we’re losing? Will these cuts be made permanent?

Farvardin: We don’t know. “Our budget situation is very fluid and very unknown. The three of us sitting here are fundamentally against the concept of pay cuts. This is not something that we advocated. We will do everything possible to make this one time.”

Staffer: Will there be a line in our paychecks for us to track how much we’re losing in pay?

Wylie: Whatever they take out in the first of 17 pay periods will be the same every time.

12:25 p.m. –

Robert Hayes, University Senate student representative: The budget is not accessible enough. “We want to see through some of the shady answers you’ve been giving.”

Mote: (laughs) “We’re very inspired by your enthusiasm. Anyone who wants to comb over this 900 page document can do so.”

AFSCME union president Greg Johnson: We started a suggestion box a month before you did, has any thought been given to radical ideas like 3-year bachelors degrees, which are good enough for Oxford and Cambridge? Will we get the furlough money back at any point? “Since we’re being cooperative when times are bad, we’d like to think that when times are good you’ll share that with us.” (applause)

Mote: We can’t continue this way. We might not go to a 3-year cycle. We certainly want pay increases when the budget situation improves. “We’re very understaffed, our staff work very hard, if you look at our staff to student ratio, it’s half of what it would it be at our peer institutions.

Wylie: “We’ve fought very hard to protect our base salaries.”

Farvardin: “If budget situation further deteriorates, or even if it does not deteriorate, in order to make access and quality better we may have to have radical solutions.”

12:30 p.m. –

Research faculty member: Why were research faculty not exempt before and are exempt now?

Mote: It was a bad decision to not exempt research faculty before. We ran into problems with people outside the campus as well. It cost the university money because we did not get overhead or other money. Agencies giving out the grants were annoyed.

SGA member: Our energy consumption is through the roof, only nine buildings are energy efficient, what are you going to do about this?

Wylie: Energy efficiency is a significant priority for the university. It’s a process that we have undertaken in a big way. We’re spending $20 million now to make nine other buildings energy efficient. We expect to recover all that money and then some. There’s a lighting replacement process were exploring for hallways, wind and geothermal projects.

Mote: Our renovation backlog is huge. We have a very old campus, much has never been renovated or hasn’t been renovated in 50 years, you can imagine the energy problems there.

12:35 p.m. –

English lecturer: I’m very pleased with the decision to go with furloughs rather than layoffs. I want to know if other state employees taking a hit, it shouldn’t be just us. I also work for a self-support unit, how will the cuts affect self-support units?

Wylie: All state employees have been furloughed. No state agencies are free of furloughs.

Farvardin: If additional cuts are in the form of furloughs, self-supports will be treated in the same way. “Until further notice we will stick with that.”

12:40 p.m. –

Andrew Steinberg, SGA VP for Financial Affairs : “How can you say you’re transparent when you won’t even let students finish. I’ve noticed when you submit questions and comments you have to log in to the website. That should be open. Yes there’s the Committee to Review Student Fees, yes there’s students on committees, but what else can you do to be more transparent?”

Mote: You can always email me at president@umd.edu. We closed off the online suggestion box because we thought people on campus might not want outsiders to know what they’re thinking. It’s about protecting them. If students have issues, they can contact VP for Student Affairs Linda Clement, she’s the high-level administration contact. That system has worked for a long time.

12:45 p.m. –

Bob Dickerson, facilities management staffer: In your email you said the cuts started in 2007. Did you start planning then? Because in facilities it seemed like business as usual. There were raises given out, new positions being created.

Mote: Then we trimmed $86 million, it didn’t get to this crisis level until just recently. At the time it didn’t seem fair to withhold salary increases when the governor’s office advised us to. We’re not sure how that would have gone over.

12:50 p.m. –

Laura Calabrese, student environmental advocate: University leadership has not done anything about the Engaged University program. Without support from the university we won’t be able to save the program. I am here to ask the administration for their expressed support to save Engaged University. We want you to acknowledge the value of the program.

Farvardin: “Due to the fluidity of the budget we can’t guarantee continuation of any program. This program was intended to be a self-support program. When it formed two years ago, it was expected that by October 2009 it was supposed to be self-supporting. When we might have to merge departments, maybe even colleges, it’s our responsibility to prioritize, to make sure what actions we take will have the least negative impact on the institution.”

12:55 p.m. –

Glickman: Instead of having to make cuts year after year, what are you doing to support long-term sustainable funding?

Mote: “Night and day we work on this sustainable funding issue. With the Bohanan Commission last year, we created a funding model for higher education in Maryland. Our budget was short by 50 percent, which shows how dramatically underfunded we are. Naturally I’m all over this commission. Maryland needs a comprehensive funding model for sustained funding. The state has a plan on the table for funding higher education, and we’re gonna do our best to push it as far as possible.” Click for info on the Bohanan Commission.

Staffer: Any insight into whether parking rates will stay the same? They’re already very expensive.

Wylie: Parking rates for students will come down a little bit, for others they will stay the same.

1:00 p.m. –

Elliott Morris: I’ll give you a multiple choice test, like the kind we have.

Can students go to Hornbake Library and put the budget online?

A) Yes

B) No

Answer why for extra credit. (audience laughter)

Wylie: We can’t put it online because personnel information is in there.

Man in audience: “It’s public already!”

Elliott Morris: The Diamondback already publishes salaries, but would you object to publishing it without salaries, if the sensitive info could be redacted? Could I take it out?

Mote: We’ll discuss it with you later.