Current strategies will cover budget cuts, Clemson president says

By Anna Simon
STAFF WRITER

CLEMSON -- At a faculty and staff meeting Wednesday, Clemson University President Jim Barker told employees already facing one-week furloughs that current strategies will cover new state cuts announced last week.

“You may have been waiting for the other shoe to fall,” Barker said.

Although Clemson’s share of the damage grew from $25 million to $38 million with the latest cuts, “there isn’t another shoe to fall,” Barker said.

Previously announced strategies that include furloughs, deferred construction, a hiring freeze and travel reductions are adequate to cover this year’s shortfall, Barker said.

The focus now is to find permanent ways to cut costs and increase revenues, and task forces made up of about 100 faculty and staff are giving up some of their free time over the holidays to find creative ways to do that, Barker said.

“What we are facing has not been experienced by any of us in our careers and we must approach this challenge with some different strategies than what we’ve used in dealing with smaller budget reductions in the past,” Barker said.

In the coming year Barker said he will work with the state’s General Assembly to gain relief from state regulations that are “expensive, redundant and unnecessary, especially in the environment.”

Citing “encouraging signs” -- including more than $41,300 donated to a relief fund to help the lowest paid employees through the furloughs, record breaking United Way donations and numerous emeritus faculty volunteering to teach without pay, Barker said he believes Clemson will emerge stronger from this crisis.

“The faculty, the staff and students at Clemson have shown over and over that we are strong and we are united,” Barker said. “No force is stronger than a united Clemson.”