OUR VIEW: USU doing best to cushion the inevitable blow

Well, in retrospect, it was inevitable.
    Twenty faculty members were recently laid off in light of those dreaded budget cuts. The decisions of who had to go took eight weeks of tough decision-making, said John DeVilbiss, university director of public relations, in the recent Board of Trustees meeting.
    Layoffs are nothing new. It seems as if everyone is in danger of receiving the pink slip nowadays. Students who were once looking forward to their forthcoming graduation are now feeling the stress of trying to get hired in a frozen market. So the recent university layoffs should just be chalked up to being more of the same of what we’re seeing all across the nation.
    But we think these layoffs are particularly tragic because the university really did take every conceivable measure to avoid laying anyone off. Besides the obvious tuition hikes (our wallets are still hurting) and budget cuts, the university has been encouraging early retirement and implemented a mandatory furlough for all university employees, including those in extension offices throughout the state. But even with a virtually dead campus for a week and that week’s pay savings helping to cushion the fall into the hole of budget cuts, more corners had to be cut.
    People can’t be spared forever from the icy hand of reality. We are saddened to see 20 fine employees leave the campus, but what else can be done? Any facility must (or, at least, should) run within its budget. Spending money that didn’t exist is what got us into this mess to begin with. What other choice did the university have?
    This is a tragic sign of the times but unavoidable, as far as we can tell. We wish them luck in finding employment elsewhere, and hope the university can find other ways of staying out of the red without laying off more people.