Letter to the Editor: Utah State is in difficult financial situation

Dear editor –

I could not agree more with your editorial of 3/31 and the letter from Mr. Law. Chinese is an extremely important language, and its importance will only grow over the next few decades. Unfortunately, USU is in a difficult financial situation. The legislature has not come through with enough funding for us, despite a state budget surplus, and we are experiencing a tuition shortfall due to lower enrollments. These cuts in funding get passed along to departments, and many departments are having to cut back on “luxuries” — such as programs (like Chinese) that are funded entirely through money that departments are able to scrounge through one way or another. The “scrounge” money is disappearing fast, just in trying to pay for things like phones and photocopies. So we are operating in a triage mode, trying to save as many academic programs as we can. We’ve been able to save upper-division Korean only because years ago some very generous donors gave some money to support that program — but that money will be disappearing fast, too.

Of course, we are doing everything else we can to keep our Chinese minor in place, and our sincerest hope is that as soon as the budget situation gets better, we will be able to restore those lower-division Chinese courses.

Charlie Huenemann

Department HeadLanguages, Philosophy and Speech Communications