Financial Challenges Dominate Campus Forum

By Amber Lester Kennedy Tuesday, September 13, 2011

WM President
Taylor Reveley

President Taylor Reveley joked about how he couldn’t be caught saying either word during a campus forum Monday afternoon. Joined by Jeffrey Trammell, the new rector of the Board of Visitors, Reveley fielded questions about a range of topics, from the college’s financial challenges to the way it handled evacuations before Hurricane Irene.

The decrease in state aid to the college — currently down to 13 percent of the college’s budget — has dominated campus forums for years. On Monday, Reveley repeated points he’s made several times: the college’s options to increase revenue are to raise more money through philanthropy, be given the freedom to admit more out-of-state students and try to make sure the college is using the most “innovative best practices” to be efficient.

To elicit best practices, the college has pushed for productivity — a push that some faculty have come to resent, according to Vice Provost for Academic Affairs Kathleen Slevin. She stood in the audience and said that although the entire nation is talking about “doing more with less,” the faculty felt they weren’t receiving adequate recognition that they are “working as hard as they can work.” For that reason, she suggested the university try to reframe the issue, perhaps by avoiding the push for productivity, which she said faculty find demoralizing after years without raises.

Reveley said he knew what she was talking about, but when he meets with big donors or politicians, they want to know if the college community is making cuts, but not letting the work suffer. “Of course we’re all working hard — we’re William and Mary,” he said, “But let’s get real with financial reality. The p-word could be another word...it could be efficiency, creative adaptation or murgatroyd. I don’t care what the word is.”

A student asked if the university might ever “go private.” To the laughter of the audience, Reveley said, “That’s an even more dangerous p-word!” He said no, explaining the college was private until 1906 when, cash-strapped, it yielded its property to the state in exchange for funding assistance. “There’s no possibility of the college going private, but I believe there is a possibility of the state giving us the freedom we need to support ourselves,” he said, referring to the college’s desire to admit more out-of-state students, despite political pushback from the General Assembly.

Professors also bristled at the implication they are slow to adapt to an increasingly online college experience. Physics professor Eugene Tracy reminded the audience that the only reason the college was wired for Internet in the 1990s was because the physics department required a data pipe to connect to Jefferson Lab, and it was the physics department that started the first website on campus. He suggested the college reframe its discussion about productivity and innovation by recognizing “the faculty and staff have always been innovators.”

The college received criticism from students and some parents over its decision to evacuate the campus one day before Hurricane Irene was projected to hit Hampton Roads. At the time, students were just moving back, freshmen were finishing their first week and international students were arriving in Williamsburg. During the forum, one student said he felt the college should have kept at least one building open on campus, especially since so many students were forced to return to areas projected to be hit by the storm.

“I loathed to send people away,” Reveley said, conceding the student had a good point. “But everybody found a spot. It was really almost heartwarming to see how students looked out for each other.” He had heard of instances where students invited strangers to come home with them, or local families took in students who couldn’t travel home.

That said, he explained the university has to close when there is a potential of an extended power outage. Most of the campus doorways, including those to dorm rooms, are operated by electronic key cards, and without power, the college could not provide food for its entire residential student body, he said. In 2003, Hurricane Isabel knocked power out to the campus for two weeks. “We will consider having one building open, though,” he pledged.