Feb. 26, 2025: Information on Budget Forum
Feb. 26, 2025 Information on Budget Forum
Requesting Journalist: Danny Pottharst
Respondent: Gina Zandy Ohnstad, Vice President for Communications
1. From a student perspective, how might the proposed cap on student printing funds lead to inequitable experiences for students?
The variant of this savings concept with the most traction is the proposal to cap the college’s subsidy for student printing at $35/year, which produces budget savings slightly in excess of $20,000. At $0.06 per black-and-white print or copy, the college would be committing to covering approximately the first 580 pages of printing or xeroxing per year, or 290 pages per semester. Most students should be able to print selected shorter readings and term papers within this constraint. To be sure, some students with a greater desire or need to print will pay more out of their own pockets, but that’s already the case for other situations (e.g., flex dollars at the Cleveland Commons) at the college.
We acknowledge that a culture shift is going to be necessary. Professors will need to reduce or eliminate their expectation that students will print out long reading or entire books and bring those printouts to class. Professors may need to reconsider policies that wholesale disallow students to use laptops, iPads, or other devices in class.
2. How would the college support students’ writing development as they enter Whitman if the writing assessment and placement process is removed?
Students in the incoming cohort of 2025-2026 will begin their college writing journey in their first year through First Year Seminars where they will write to learn, to persuade, and to communicate with different audiences. Writing Across Contexts courses, taken primarily in the second or third year, challenge students to develop writing practices relevant to specific disciplinary areas of study. Writing Across Contexts courses may be taken in a student’s major, in a related field, or in a different area of interest chosen in consultation with their advisor.
3. During the presentation, it was made clear that the proposed reduction of the ADA Physical Barriers Elimination Budget would not impact the college's ADA compliance. How might it lead to inequitable experiences for students with disabilities?
Accessibility is an important part of inclusive excellence, and we are focused in making improvements to remove barriers to access, guided by the leadership of students, staff and faculty on the Campus Access Committee. The minor cut proposed for the budget that supports the elimination of physical barriers on campus would not increase inequitable experiences for students with disabilities. Instead, it would slightly decrease the rate at which the college gradually addresses the remaining body of accessibility issues with its grounds and buildings.
In recent years, the college has funded an array of accessibility-related projects:
- $165,000 for an accessible and gender-neutral bathroom on the first floor of Olin Hall.
- $165,000 for a turtletop that can transport two wheelchair users at the same time.
- $120,000 for a sidewalk correction that supports wheelchair users moving from the Jewett parking lot to Olin Hall.
- $40,000 for the purchase of adaptive equipment for the Outdoor Program.
- $85,000 for a sidewalk correction from the parking lot west of Jewett Hall to Olin Hall.
- $115,000 for sidewalk corrections to improve accessibility from Jewett Hall to Lyman Hall.
- $100,000 for sidewalk corrections to improve accessibility from Lyman Hall to the amphitheater.
- ADA-compliant parking at the front of Cordiner Hall.
- A junior-senior village — with 212 bedrooms across three apartment buildings — that meet or exceed the requirements of the ADA.
The college retains a variety of approaches for funding ongoing accessibility-related improvements, including: deployment of life cycle (i.e., deferred maintenance) funds to complete projects that feature accessibility elements; allocating one-time funds from operating surpluses, as they are realized; and issuing debt or directing philanthropy towards capital projects that improve accessibility.
The college fully complies with the Americans with Disabilities Act. There is a common confusion about the ADA; it does not require wholesale or instantaneous renovations to older buildings that were constructed or renovated prior to the ADA. Instead, when the college undertakes substantial renovations to an existing building, it must plan to bring the areas within the project scope into compliance with the ADA. The college must also have a transition plan — and it does — and demonstrate that it is making good-faith efforts consistent with that plan, that would ultimately bring all of the college’s grounds and buildings into compliance with the ADA.
4. What is Whitman's plan in exploring tenure track lines to cut?
The budget reductions currently under consideration do not contain any recommendations for elimination of tenure track lines this year. Last spring the faculty paused all tenure track hiring for this academic year. Faculty restarted the normal process for proposing new and replacement tenure track lines this fall. Faculty leadership and the Provost’s office are in conversations currently about which positions to recommend for searches in the 2025-2026 academic year, for faculty members to begin in fall of 2027. The recommendations would next go to President Bolton and then to the Board of Trustees for approval.
5. Does the college agree with the 2022 external review assessment that its cuts, at the time, were "draconian"? Are you anticipating a similar critique to be levied this time around?
While the cuts being considered are less than 2% of the college’s total operating budget, the process of going through budget reductions is still a difficult one that is felt in various ways across the campus community. Reducing some expenditures is now commonplace, on an annual basis, at nearly all colleges and universities as demographic changes reduce the number of students going to college in the United States. President Bolton and Vice President Jeff Hamrick have been diligent and transparent over the past 18 months about the budget challenges that Whitman is facing and the steps needed to create a balanced budget moving forward. (You can find much more detail, and all of the presentations here.) So, there seems to be an understanding of where we are fiscally as a college and an understanding of the market challenges behind the needs for the budget reductions.
The planning process to carefully consider budgets across the college and identify potential areas for savings was set up so as not to disproportionately affect any one particular group on campus and each working group has been extremely thoughtful about not only the impact of each proposal, but how the proposals, when considered together, will impact different groups of faculty, staff and students.
Feb. 26, 2025 Additional Question on Budget Forum
Requesting Journalist: Bex Heimbrock
Respondent: Gina Zandy Ohnstad, Vice President for Communications
Request:
I wanted to make sure the President and others involved in the cuts have the opportunity to comment on concerns that, in comparison to substantial cuts to other programs, the President's budget(s) have largely remained unscathed.
Response:
As explained in the forum, President Bolton, along with each vice president, was asked to create savings proposals to present to the budget working groups that were approximately proportional to their division’s fraction of the total operating budget. So it is not the case that any one budget was spared from cuts more so than any other budget. Cuts to the president’s budget include, as you mentioned, cuts to events at Sherwood House. They also include cuts to the public relations funds that sit in the president’s budget and cuts to the president’s discretionary budget that funds special projects. The President’s budget represents about 2% of the total operating budget and the proposed cuts to that area represent a little more than 2% of the total proposed cuts. For reference, I have included below the proposed cuts to the president’s budget as they are seen in the budget document shared with campus.
Sherwood House Entertainment (10004) / Division: President
FY25 base budget: $33,750
Range of recommended reductions: $8,000
Events at the president’s house include gatherings of students, faculty and staff, as well as alumni. The proposed reduction will modestly constrain events at the President’s house, but not in a very impactful way. Recently, expenditures against this budget have more typically been around $25,000 per year, suggesting that the proposed reduction will be sustainable.
Public Relations Discretionary (10013) / Division: President
FY25 base budget: $8,000
Range of recommended reductions: $6,000
For now, the remaining $2,000 in base budget will be used to support Festival de la Cultura Viva / Teatro Popular each year.
Office of the President Discretionary (10001) / Division: President
FY25 base budget: $115,750
Range of recommended reductions: $10,000 - $20,000
The proposed reduction is sustainable, though it will reduce flexibility in the President’s budget to support special projects around the campus.