By Emily Huigens
Independent-Mail
February 4, 2004

COLUMBIA — Forget tightening belts. The budget cuts that South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford has proposed at Clemson University would leave the school’s research, public service and academic programs in starvation mode, the school’s leading administrators told the university’s trustees Wednesday.

At the trustees’ winter meeting and retreat held just blocks from the Statehouse and governor’s office, policy makers from the university completed a day of business Wednesday that was overshadowed by the potential for deeply wounding cuts to its public service funding.

The governor’s proposed cuts are supposed to leave the school’s core mission intact, but top administrators told trustees Wednesday that there is no separating academic work and research from public service work.

In a meeting at the state capitol, they planned informal meetings with legislators, during which they likely will begin asking them to do all they can to avoid the governor’s proposed cuts.

Gov. Sanford’s executive budget, which still must be approved by legislators, calls for $15.6 million in direct cuts from the public service funding for the university.

But along with his counterparts in the academic development and research, John Kelly, vice president for Agriculture and Public Service, told trustees that the $15 million inevitably and quickly would lead to another $30 million in lost revenue.

That number doesn’t include the lost research grants after loss of the people who write grant requests or the cost of replacing public service money with teaching funds if professors no longer can be paid for their public service work.

"A cut makes it sound like you’re saving money. In fact, it’s costing us money," trustees Chairman Bill Hendrix said.

While the school’s leaders have known about the proposed cuts and discussed them on campus for more than a week, the Wednesday discussion marked the first time trustees faced possible consequences of the cuts. The decisions to restructure and cut personnel would fall to them.

Such a deep cut can’t be accommodated by cutting operations — the university would have to lose faculty and staff members, Mr. Kelly said.

The trustees, he said, would have to sit down for a "more brutal discussion than Clemson is used to."

Mr. Hendrix said while the university might hope the cuts aren’t approved, trustees must prepare for the worst, and decide how to begin unraveling the university from the inside out.

Emily Huigens can be reached at (800) 859-6397, Ext. 326 or by e-mail at huigensee@IndependentMail.com.

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