BY RAPHAEL SASSOWER

As the national academic landscape makes clear, academic freedom battles are often diverted to or fought in the budgetary arena: Money talks! To ensure that the mission of the university is not overlooked by our administrators, our AAUP chapter has demanded greater transparency in budgetary decision-making processes. Instead, we receive annual notices of budget deficits and cuts to academic programs (whose tuition accounts for about 70 percent of campus revenue). Shiny new objects, like named buildings and “innovative” academic programs, proliferate without prior consultation with the faculty (who, as the University of Colorado Regent Laws explicitly say, have the sole discretion over academic decisions). We might be heard, but we undoubtedly are not listened to.

Having learned of the amazing work Eastern Michigan University accounting professor Howard Bunsis performs in unearthing and reframing data for university budget reports, we raised the funds to hire him in spring 2023. He delivered a report to us in October 2023. We held internal conversations through the 2023–24 academic year and then made a campus presentation on February 10, 2024, with the newly appointed chancellor present). The full Bunsis report was sent to the administration in April 2024. With ongoing meetings and conversations about the report and its inadequacies—a standard response, as the author of the report tells us—the AAUP leadership met with the chancellor and her leadership team on November 20, 2024: They contend the report is inaccurate and reluctantly but openly admitted that their own budget numbers are indeed problematic. The same day, the chancellor sent a long email to the campus community that at least mentioned the AAUP by name as part of the reason for reworking, yet again, the budget.

The chancellor publicly acknowledged that her team’s “efforts demonstrate our commitment to financial transparency. We have begun the process of compiling and uploading videos of those meetings, which will be uploaded here as they are finalized. The UCCS Chapter of the AAUP contributed an external budget analysis that helped to further define our thinking. With all these efforts and many more preceding it, we’ve come to a more defined place in our planning” (bold italics added). Mind you, this email was sent at the end of 2024. We began voicing our concerns in the 2016–17 academic year, asking the administration to reveal the details of their budgets, administrative bloat, and recurring deficits.

At an event for the April 17 National Day of Action for Higher Ed last week, we recounted this long story along with presentations about academic freedom and shared governance (invoking both the AAUP’s definitions and those of our university’s board of regents); we reminded our members and the rest of the campus that we cannot trust anything the administration says about the most recent budget deficit.

I’d like to end this report with the personal note I sent at the end of the day of action to the faculty and staff.

Dear colleagues and friends,

I write this with a heavy heart, knowing the national and state external pressure we are experiencing. These conditions do not trump local and internal procedures for shared governance, which is radically different from frequent sharing information by administrators and their messengers in emails. Therefore,

I refuse to spend my time doing the work of administrators.

I refuse to provide cover for administrative decisions after they were made.

I refuse to find solutions to problems created by administrators.

I refuse to pay for administrative mismanagement.

I refuse to be complicit, through committee work, with administrative obfuscations.

I refuse to spend my hard-earned reputation bolstering the reputation of administrators.

I refuse to share in austerity but never in the decisions that create budget deficits.

I refuse to accept spending priorities decided by administrators without the prior consultation of faculty and students.

I demand administrative accountability in the form of annual performance evaluations for administrators.

I demand financial transparency in the form of clear, legible budgets, including detailed data on deficits, spending plans, and administrative salaries and bonuses.

I demand annual audited financial reports so that future plans are aligned with past realities.

I demand administrative personnel changes when the campus suffers repeated annual deficits regardless of exogenous circumstances; those should be anticipated and when occurring prompt immediate adjustments.

In solidarity,

Raphi

Raphael Sassower is professor of philosophy at the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs, where he has taught since fall 1986. He is the founding president of the AAUP chapter, which rotates officers annually. His email address is rsassower@gmail.com.