OUR VIEW: University doing well to protect students

Hey, we’re in a recession. The university is undergoing budget cuts.
    Departments are being cut and professors are being encouraged to retire.
    Every day, the headlines seem to give a new angle of the doom and gloom that is our economy. We’re sorry – we don’t make the news, we just report it.
    With the university cutting every fiscal corners possible, from furloughs to limiting the amount of paper teachers can use for class handouts, one wonders how far this new thriftiness trickles. Professors and staff are surely suffering, as are students with the new tuition hikes.
    Student employees, however, seem to have been hit least hardest, so far at least. On-campus employers appear to be doing everything they can to make sure they hurt their working scholars as little as possible, despite their tight budgets.
    Sure, hours may be cut and employers on campus might not be hiring right now, but from where we’re standing, we see a pretty note-worthy effort from departments not to fire more employees than is absolutely necessary and to help students keep working the same hours and times that they were before this whole economic craziness really let loose. Kudos to them.
    We hope that the students who are working on campus will recognize this. Jobs are tough to find right now – just ask any of the hundreds of unemployed students. And while your hours might be limited or cut, at least you have hours and you can probably acknowledge that your boss is trying to do the best they can given the difficult circumstances.
    Times are tough and will continue to get harder. There is really nothing we can do to prevent that. But here at The Statesman we’re giving a big pat on the back to those who are trying to make it less bad.