KRISTIN ELVES

A group from the University of Arizona Dance Ensemble rehearses in Crowder Hall last week. Programs throughout the College of Fine Arts are already reducing expenses to prepare for the effects of the university-wide budget cuts.

Wednesday October 17, 2001

Departments implement new fees, ask staff members to cut expenses

For students in the College of Fine Arts, the $13.8 million state-mandated budget cuts are already taking their toll - even though UA administrators have not yet officially ordered departments to make cuts.

The School of Music has instituted a "pay to play" policy for the use of its two concert halls - Crowder and Holsclaw - meaning students who wish to use these halls for their degree recitals will now have to pay a fee.

This fee - $75 for Holsclaw and $100 for Crowder - will cover the costs of student labor in the halls, as well as programs and advertising.

"It's a nice way for us to cut expenses without going into human resources," said Rex Woods, associate director of the school of music.

Meanwhile, the department of media arts has curbed all expenditures for capital investment in production equipment that exceeds $1,000 and departments college-wide have been asked to eliminate travel and reduce their operational costs by 10 percent - which means they will need to cut back on copying and long distance phone use, said College of Fine Arts Dean Charles Sevigny.

"Film and video equipment by its nature is very expensive, and also by its nature, it has to be replaced from wear and tear," said Craig Caldwell, interim head of the media arts department. "This will make it difficult for us to purchase new equipment."

These new policies come in light of a mandate from Gov. Jane Dee Hull that the University of Arizona - as well as numerous other state-supported departments - cut 4 percent from their annual budgets.

The UA administration is working to make cuts before passing the responsibility along to individual departments, said UA President Peter Likins.

Last week the Arizona International College - which will be eliminated as current students graduate and professors' contracts expire - joined the Integrated Learning Center and Campaign Arizona as departments that will be negatively impacted by the cuts.

Departments are expected to be asked to begin making cuts sometime after the state Legislature meets for a special session that begins Nov. 13. Likins said that until then, no specific figure will be released.

But departments within the College of Fine Arts have already initiated new lab fees and a freeze in equipment purchases, with the knowledge that more cuts are a virtual certainty.

For fine arts, the financial shortfall has been compounded by the recent economic downturn, which Sevigny blames for a 20 percent reduction in box office revenue.

Still, imposing a fee on required degree recitals did not sit well with one student in the fine arts college.

"I understand the cuts, but to me it is a shame because it might make it so that it's harder to use some of the facilities in the music department," said Steve McMackin, a graphic design and music composition junior. "There're rumors that the composition concerts will not be able to be in Crowder or Holsclaw Hall (but) we can't afford to use them because (now) we have to pay for them."

Woods said, though, that most students in general have accepted the new recital fee and do not mind using the smaller classroom setting for concerts instead of the two large halls.

"Most of the students have felt that the fee was reasonable. They have elected to go into the hall. Some have gone to the classrooms, particularly out-of-town students who don't expect to have larger audiences and prefer the intimate classroom setting," he said.

Woods added that this fee is typical for universities around the country, and that University of Arizona has avoided charging it for several years.

Music students are not required to perform their degree recitals at either of the halls; they can opt instead for several large classrooms in the department, Woods said.

Undergraduate students are required to perform one senior recital, graduate students have one thesis recital, and doctoral students have four doctoral recitals. The school sees 150 to 250 of these recitals over the course of a year.

Likins has also indicated that adjunct faculty whose contracts must be renewed in the spring may not be rehired for the spring semester, a prospect that could exact a heavy toll on the media arts department - where students have a 70 percent chance of having a non-tenure-track faculty member.

"It's going to hurt. There's no question about it," said Michael Mulcahy, a media arts assistant professor who also works in the Media Arts Production Laboratory that oversees the department's production equipment.

In the School of Art, 96.5 percent of the total budget goes to pay faculty salaries, which means that a personnel cut would be inevitable even if operating expenses were eliminated entirely, if the 4 percent budget cut mandated by Hull stands.

"As you can see, any cut exceeding 3.5 percent would unavoidably mean laying off or reducing employees," Andy Polk, director of the School of Art, stated in an e-mail interview. "The potential impact is not good. Support for classes - equipment, materials, etc. etc.- may be diminished. Even at best, we expect that we may have to reduce the number of courses we offer."

Sevigny also said that the search for a new department head for the School of Art will be delayed for one year and for two years for media arts.

Mulcahy said that although the cuts will be detrimental, he does not expect them to interfere with the college's goal of instructing students in the fine arts.

He acknowledged that the department is in need of new equipment - in order to keep its program competitive with peer institutions - but he said he doesn't think the cuts will severely impact the department.

"I don't want to suggest that we don't need good equipment - that we don't need more - but this won't prevent us from teaching our students why to make media in the first place," he said. "It won't prevent us from giving our students a critical approach to media and how to work within a production environment."

Departments in the college don't yet know how deep the cuts will be, but Sevigny and his department heads said their top priority is preserving the quality of their students' education.

"It is too early to know who or what will be affected. This can be better assessed when the exact amounts of the rescission is known," Polk stated. "However, as we make the difficult choices, it is our intent to preserve our ability to provide for our students' educations as well as is possible."