More than a thousand students, professors and faculty have put their names on a petition to protest proposed layoffs during the new budget cycle.
The Texas State Employees Union is organizing the petition and asking participants on campus to call the UT Board of Regents, UT President William Powers and state legislators with their concerns.
Organizers cannot say what kind of impact the petition will have on the UT administration.
French lecturer Peter Fazziola said he has seen the petitions posted in hallways, but has not done much to circulate them.
“I am opposed to the cuts,” Fazziola said. “But I do, perhaps rightly or perhaps wrongly, have a sense of futility in stopping them. The UT administration controls the money, and if they don’t release it to the department, there is not much we can do.”
The union began circulating the petition this month to raise opposition to proposed cuts to the College of Liberal Arts budget. Union secretary James Rubarth-Lay said the response to the petition has been mostly positive and a definitive end date for the campaign has not been set.
“The petition is meant to put pressure on the administration to reconsider the emphasis they want to place on hiring prestigious faculty,” Rubarth-Lay said. “We’re still discussing a definitive plan, but we will bring it to the administration.”
Union members gave the copies of the petition to faculty, staff and lecturers, who then distributed them to their classes and posted them on notice boards around campus.
To free up funds to pay for the new Liberal Arts building and to support newly hired faculty, Liberal Arts Dean Randy Diehl announced in August the college would reallocate between $10 million and $13 million, in part by eliminating lecturer and teaching assistant positions.
Because of a flat budget for the upcoming academic year, the University has asked all colleges to internally reallocate resources to cover hiring, faculty and staff raises and any new initiatives. Powers recognized the college in his State of the University address as one that is taking steps toward meeting the overall priorities of the University.
“These are very difficult decisions to make in Liberal Arts,” Diehl said in a statement. “We’re trying to accomplish this in ways that have the least impact on student education and faculty research.”
Diehl eliminated a proposal to revamp the foreign language curriculum by cutting required credit hours — and possibly increasing class sizes — last week after an overwhelmingly negative response from faculty.
Marcin Rusinkiewicz, a comparative literature graduate student, has worked with the Union to circulate the petition. He said that keeping the same requirements was not an “unqualified victory.”
“It’s not entirely clear what else is going to be cut in order to make up for it,” Rusinkiewicz said.
Because the foreign language changes were taken off the table, each department will be responsible for reallocating funds. Discussion about where the money will come from has already started among department chairs, but nothing has been solidified.
Linguistics sophomore Rixon Rouse heard about the petition through his Italian professor and signed it.
“If the college cuts lecturers, it could increase the amount of students in each class,” Rouse said. “I think it’s important to have small classes because students need to have as much speaking time per hour as possible.”
Although Rouse has almost finished his Italian credit hours, he said the reallocations indirectly affect him because he may want to take another language.
