SGA Beat

Author: Mario Ariza

The Crest Room was witness to a strange sight on Oct. 28. The school's top brass, including President of the College Ronald D. Liebowitz, Chief Financial Officer (CFO) Patrick Norton and Acting Provost Tim Spears presented a joint session of the Student Government Association (SGA) Senate and Cabinet with an in-depth review of the College's financial position.

"We're trying to convey the message that we're in a strong position," said Liebowitz, as CFO Patrick Norton ran through the slides of a comprehensive Power Point presentation that diagrammed the College's incomes, earnings, debt-obligations and overall financial health. The presentation, which was given to the Trustees during their retreat last parent's weekend puts the College's yearly revenue at $210 million for 2008, $49 million of which were expected to come from returns from the Colleges endowment.

However, even in the best of times and the most bullish of markets, Middlebury's operational cost structure is such that it loses money. Usually, this doesn't matter and money from the endowment's interest more than makes up for the difference. But with negative growth rates this quarter and the possibilities of a stagnant stock market for years to come, the College's usually inconsequential operating loss of $4 million takes on a new dimension, with the possibility of a $20 million deficit over the four years.

The challenges facing the College are summed up nicely on the twenty-fourth slide of the presentation, "how does the College maintain balanced budgets when it has (1) reached the maximum enrollment on the VT campus, (2) tuition pricing is at the ceiling we can charge, (3) annual fund gifts have reached record levels and (4) endowment spending rate is finally back down to five percent?"

Several concrete actions are outlined, among them a hiring freeze, a reduction in travel, a slowdown in renovations and a campus-wide committee to tackle cost reduction. Also being considered by the now sitting Budget Oversight Committee are reductions in spending on auxiliary operations like the Snow Bowl, the golf course and the bookstore.

SGA president Bobby Joe Smith '09 supported disseminating as much of this information to the student body as possible.

"If we explain the reason why (there are cost cuts), students are going to be a lot more accepting," he said.

Yet, certain senators expressed reservations about the glib and polished nature of the presentation, and skepticism about the large volume of information thrown at the joint session in a short period.

"I get the feeling they're trying to sell us on something" said senator Annie Weinberg '10 afterwards.