MSU Conservative

The State News has an interesting definition of the word news.

On the front page of their website is a story about Prop 8 protesters gathering outside the Michigan capitol. It’s the main story on their website as of 1:41am Wednesday.

Meanwhile when the Tax Day Tea Party protesters gathered at the Capitol in April I vividly remember having to dig around the State News website to find the story.

Funny, 120 people gather at the Capitol to protest a ruling that is affecting a state 2,000 miles away and the State News deems that main story worthy. Yet 5,000 Michigan residents gather to protest policies that directly effect this state and the community and the State News hides it on their website.

That’s certainly an interesting definition of news.

–jb

I just got a rather humorous email in my inbox from the Provost of the University.

The office of the Provost has asked us to share the following information with faculty, staff and students:

In light of the recent H1N1 swine flu outbreak, MSU wants your help in keeping your fellow Spartans and guests safe during this busy week on campus. At this time MSU’s health professionals advise that all classes, commencement activities and business operations continue as scheduled. However, they do recommend taking one simple but prudent preventative measure – avoid shaking hands.

The following message will be posted to all video monitors at the commencement ceremonies:

“To remain cautious, in light of the flu outbreak, we have chosen to refrain from handshaking today.”

Stop shaking hands? Really? Why don’t we all just wash our hands after using the bathroom, then the need to stop shaking hands would be eliminated.

Not to mention there hasn’t been a single reported case of swine flu on campus or a single confirmed case in the Lansing area. Heck there’s only 1,124 confirmed cases worldwide with a survival rate of 98%. I think the university is going a little over-the-top with a “no handshaking” rule at commencement.

Take a pill MSU, I think we can safely shake hands and maintain our health and lack of swine flu.

–jb

The MSU Board of Trustees is considering a tuition hike of 4 to 5 percent to make up for a loss in state funding.

ASMSU and students across campus, including myself, have said they would like tuition capped at 2%. The good news is that the hike isn’t 9%, but let’s be honest, that was never going to happen. President Simon said that was one extreme of the spectrum and she couldn’t foresee it coming to fruition. That didn’t stop multiple groups from using it as a tuition scare tactic against students.

The reasoning behind the hike, according to Simon and the Board, is that federal stimulus dollars intended for the university never made its way to the university.

The stimulus at one point could have provided MSU with about $80 million dollars over a three-year period, MSU President Lou Anna K. Simon said last Friday during MSU’s board meeting.

Simon said she met with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi earlier last week. Pelosi said stimulus money was supposed to be used for higher education, but since Michigan has not yet balanced its budget it may use stimulus money to fill in the gaps, Simon said.

I think Simon might have a little too much faith in the government to appropriate money. She might want to shed that faith as soon as possible. I certainly never believed any of that money would make it to MSU and I still don’t think it will, and quite frankly I don’t think it should. First and foremost I’d like the state to reject stimulus dollars, but that’s not going to happen. But with extra money the state should do what any family would do, pay off debt and fill the void in the budget. That’s the only way the state can stay consistent in giving money to universities in the future.

However, it seems the university is looking solely at tuition as a way to fill the gap. Nowhere in the State News article does it mention talks of spending cuts. That may or may not have been discussed, but that should be a huge component to any mention of balancing the budget. Smart cuts can make the difference and if you have to layoff employees, so be it.

The other problem I saw was the double-edged sword that the university forgets about.

At the board meeting, Simon said MSU is looking at raising financial aid by about 15 percent to help students. MSU gave almost $470 million in financial aid during the 2007-08 year.

I think the increasing of financial aid is a large component to the increase in tuition. Allow me to explain.

As the university increases tuition, the amount of people who can’t afford tuition increases. Because the university wants to maintain a diverse student body and keep their enrollment high, they extend financial aid to these students. When they increase financial aid they’re spending more money. As they spend more money it becomes more difficult to balance the budget, thus they increase tuition. And the cycle continues.

The university wouldn’t have to spend more money on financial aid if they kept tuition low in the first place.

Here’s what I would like to see from the university’s budget: raise tuition by 2% and use spending cuts to make up the rest. It won’t be easy to make those cuts, but they’re necessary.

–jb

UPDATE: Well we visited the room and the verdict is in, it’s the room for the Black Caucus. Not much of a surprise there, but I think there are more accomplished African Americans they could have named the room after. Someone like I don’t know, Martin Luther King, or how about Thurgood Marshall or Clarence Thomas. In any event the Black Caucus would have had to get permission from the university to rename the room, after all they had to put the name on the sign.

It’s been an interesting day for me.

I usually don’t use the camera on my phone, it takes terrible pictures and I feel funny using it to take pictures, I really don’t know why. Anyway, I will use it when I see something that’s so audacious and ridiculous that it must be documented.

Today I had two of those experiences, so far. It’s really unprecendented.

First, I was coming out of the radio station this morning after DJing and saw they put new signs up in Holden Hall. They’re very nice, but probably a huge waste of money. The first thing that caught my eye on these new signs was a room that I had never heard of before:

Yup, we got a “Barack H. Obama” room here on campus. The guy hasn’t even been in office for 100 days and we’ve already named a room after him. Now, I didn’t get a chance to go check out this room, I’m assuming it’s like Pandora’s Box, it’s just filled with hope. I think I’m going to take a look at it tonight when I’ll be closer to Holden Hall.

I was thinking of reasons the university would name a room after Obama, ya know trying to give them the benefit of the doubt. I could only come up with two legitimate reasons:

1.) They keep changing the name of the room based on who is president. Although I find this highly unlikely considering if the room was named “George W. Bush Room” there would be protests outside of it everyday.
2.) They have a room named after each president across the entire campus. Certainly plausible but if there are rooms named after the other 43 presidents I haven’t seen any. And again they’d have the protest problem with the Bush room…and the Nixon room.

In short, I’d love to hear the university’s excuse for naming a room after a president who hasn’t even been in office for half a year.

The second picture I had to capture today was of the table tent, or table square thing, at the cafeteria.

For those who don’t know, here at Michigan State we get table square things that tell us what activities are available this week. It’s much like a retirement home, only the activities require physical movement. Anyway, every environmental holiday (which is nearly every week now) we get bombarded with green propaganda on these little things.

This one made me laugh because it’s explaining what you can do to save paper.

Hmm…I have an idea…stop printing these worthless table square things and just email everyone the activities for the week. Can you imagine how much paper they’d save. It would be like one trees worth. Now we’re really saving the earth!

–jb

Cross posted from Blog of Bodnar

UPDATE: Reports are saying there were nearly 1,000 people gathered at the Hudsonville protest on the west side of the state. Just for some context, there are only about 7,000 people living in the city of Hudsonville.

Government spending is out of control and they’re not going to take it anymore.

That about sums up the feelings of over 5,000 people who traveled to the Capitol Building in Lansing today to voice their frustration with Washington, and the State’s, excessive spending and taxation. I was lucky enough to be there for the entire event and I must say, people are fired up and ready to take back this country.

I got to the Capitol at about 9:30am this morning. I was working with Leon Drolet and the Michigan Taxpayers Alliance handing out information and signing people up on the email list. Because I was there so early I got to see the crowd grow throughout the day. I’ll admit, it snuck up on me. One minute I was handing someone a pamphlet and getting them signed up on the email list, the next I look up and there were thousands of people gathered.

The actual event didn’t start until noon, but by 10:30am there were at least a thousand gathered and the crowd continued to grow until it plateaued at around 12:30pm. The official estimate from the Michigan Police was 5,000.

Several speakers addressed the crowd and during their speeches the crowd broke out in chants of “USA” or “send her home” referring to Jennifer Granholm. People booed at the mention of a multi-trillion deficit, and applauded the call to “take back our country.”

The left has been positioning themselves to simply dismiss these events. They’ve been drumming up speculation of their size in the media, they’ve said the meaning behind the events doesn’t make sense, and they’ve written everyone who attends them off as “anti-government extremists.” There were 5,000 people in Lansing, there are nearly 10,000 in Sacramento, darn near that amount (if not more) in San Antonio. After it’s all said and done near 100,000 people will have taken to the streets today to tell Washington they’re pissed off at the insane spending. I don’t care what the left says, you can’t simply dismiss those numbers.

I snapped over 100 photographs of the event, I’ve put some of the best online. You can check them out here. I should have some video online later tonight.

–jb

I always joke that when I drive into Detroit it magically becomes cloudy. I don’t know if I’d call it magically though, that word is usually paired with something good. Let’s say it suddenly becomes cloudy. Yeah, that’s better.

If it’s always sunny in Philadelphia, it’s always gloomy in Detroit.

Well, today it was sunny in Detroit. Actually, I have no idea if it was sunny or not, I’m about 90 miles from D-Town right now. But I will say that from a budget standpoint it was sunny.

Mayor Kenneth Cockrel Jr. this morning unveiled a “sober yet straightforward” budget to City Council that includes laying off 334 workers and eliminating 504 vacant positions to trim $42 million from the city’s General Fund.

I praised Cockrel back in November when he first said that layoffs were inevitable and he’s followed through on that. Don’t think that I’m happy that people are losing their jobs, obviously that’s terrible, but I’m happy that at least one government is waking up and realizing that while every private business is downsizing they need to as well.

Aside from the hundreds of layoffs, Cockrel has also announced that the $300 solid waste fee will be reduced to $240. Obviously I would like to see that eliminated, but it’s a start.

Cockrel basically said today that while this budget isn’t fantastic news for city workers, it’s a pill they have to swallow because it’s been put off in budgets prior.

“I have brought to this budget the perspective of a native and longtime Detroit resident — so none of my decisions were taken lightly,” Cockrel said. “Ultimately, presenting a realistic budget that deals head-on with fiscal challenges that have been put off or even covered up in recent years is vital to our city’s survival. Balancing the budget, especially in these difficult economic times, involves making tough choices everywhere.”

Cockrel is also making some common sense cuts such as trimming grass cutting in parks from every 10 days to every 15 days. He’s also asking citizens to adopt parks and help maintain them.

However, the budget does have it’s downsides, such as a proposed increase in parking fees.

But for every downside there’s an upside, Cockrel is also purposing leasing city assets.

Part of the way the city’s budget gap would be patched, Cockrel said, is by leasing some city assets and revenue streams. Cockrel also said the city is still exploring leasing assets including the Detroit-Windsor Tunnel, Municipal Parking and the Public Lighting Department for a total savings of $275 million, including $100 million apiece from the tunnel and parking and $75 million from lighting.

So it’s not complete privatization, but it’s getting some debts and work off the government’s hands, which is always a plus.

But just as it starts to feel as if all this sunshine is too much to ask for, a stray cloud wonders over and casts a shadow on Detroit. That cloud is Detroit City Council. They seem to not like everything, they’re kind of like the Simon Cowell of Detroit City Government.

Councilwoman Barbara-Rose Collins was critical of the leasing of city assets and the trash fee, which she called “regressive” to some city residents.

“It seems like we’re going into a new type of governing now,” Collins said. “A lot of what you (presented) can be called privatization really. It seems like we’re looking at that more and more for increased revenue. I thought you would keep fighting that battle (against the trash fee) and put it back in property taxes so it’s not so regressive against poor people. I would like to see you not carry this (forward) in the future.”

I find this quote fantastic. She says that it seems like they’re going into a new type of government. Well, seeing as the old type of government got you no where but into a $300 million hole and basically made Detroit an island of poverty, I’d say that a “new type” of government should be welcomed with opened arms.

I’d like to see more cost cutting in the Detroit government, hell I’d like to see it in every government. Detroit has been a heavy liberal city for so long now it’s time to try a little bit of conservatism.

Maybe then it’ll always be sunny in Detroit.

–jb

One of my favorite days is fast approaching. It’s the one day of the year where you can easily identify the global warming sheep. They’ll be the ones sitting in their rooms…in the dark.

It’s Earth Hour.

It started as a meaningless project in Sydney, Australia, and it has expanded to be a meaningless project throughout the entire world.

The idea is that you turn off all “non-essential equipment” for one hour on Saturday March 28. So if anyone was considering unplugging their life support to save the planet, you’re out of luck.

Michigan State president Lou Ann K Simon thought it would be a great idea to team up with the World Wildlife Federation (the people behind this scare tactic ad), to be a “flagship” university of the Earth Hour project.

What does this mean? Well MSU students get to be flooded with spam emails and posters around campus (posters made from paper, which is made from trees, which must be cut down to make the paper, which then means there are less trees, meaning less plants to intake life killing CO2 in the air), telling us that we should turn off our lights and “non-essential equipment” on either Friday March 27 from noon to 1pm, or Saturday March 28 from 8:30pm to 9:30pm.

Yeah, right.

To encourage people to turn off their electronics, the university has setup Earth Hour Events! Yay! So instead of sitting alone in the dark in your room, you can go and sit in the dark with other people and talk. Right? I mean, they wouldn’t turn on the TV for an Earth Hour event? After all, that would producing life killing CO2.

Wrong.

Three of the events are “elite eight viewing parties” which unless they setup a basketball hoop and find 10 basketball players, will require a television set. And one event is evening screening “An Inconvenient Truth.” Ya know what’s an inconvenient truth? The fact that screening that movie will require electricity. Aww shucks!

One event even advertises that they’ll have glow sticks. Which contain hydrogen peroxide and phenol (as a by-product). That can cause some pretty nasty skin irritations and even nausea when it comes directly in contact with skin. I’m guessing it won’t be doing the earth wonders in a landfill.

As a fun response to Earth Hour here’s what I propose. It’s the Offsetting Earth Hour project. I ask each and everyone of you to pledge that on Saturday March 28 from 8:30pm to 9:30pm you’ll go about your daily lives; watching TV, surfing the internet, enjoying full illumination, whatever you normally do during the day.

On top of that I want you to charge your cell phones, unnecessarily print off stuff, and plug in anything in your room that was meant to be plugged in. Just for this one hour.

Together we can offset Earth Hour.

–jb

This is part one of many of my reviews of the MSU budget and where our money is going. Right now I’m taking baby steps down the trail of money, soon we’ll get into specific projects and purchases, but right now I’m simply attempting to identify where to look for those projects and purchases.

First, I’d like to address the idea of a tuition freeze. There’s a group on Facebook called the “Michigan State University Transparency and Accountability Initiative,” they’re basically attempting to get the university to be open and transparent about their spending. Of course I would advocate for all staff salaries to be put online as well as all spending. After all, the spending is computerized within the university as it is, why not put it on the internet?

The group is inviting people to an open mic night at the next ASMSU meeting to discuss a tuition freeze. As much as I’m against an increase in tuition, I think a freeze isn’t going to do much good. For starters, the university would stand to lose between $11,110,176 and $14,181,860 if they simply didn’t increase tuition based on the rate of inflation. The first number would be a freeze on undergraduate tuition with the average student taking 14 credits for two semesters, the last number is all students assuming a 14 credit average as well. Again, that’s how much they would lose by not increasing tuition at the rate of inflation. Couple that with the $9,000,000 the state is cutting in funding and in one year the university would lose roughly $21,646,018 in funding, just over 2.3% of the entire budget.

The university is in a budgetary pickle, all I’m asking is they look at spending cuts first and then tuition increases. I have no problem if the university increases tuition based on the rate of inflation each year, and based on the amount of money they receive from the state each year. However, even in years when state allocation has gone up, tuition has gone up over the rate of inflation as well. I would recommend that the university increase the tuition for next year by the rate of inflation, that would amount to an $11 increase per credit per semester. That works outs to a $308 increase for a student taking 14 credits for the entire year.

By the way, I think it might be better for the university, and the state for that matter, to decrease out-of-state tuition and increase out-of-state enrollment very slightly. This would make Michigan State more competitive with other universities and a good chunk of people that graduate in a state, stay in that state upon graduation. Just a thought.

Okay, now that we’ve settled the idea of a tuition freeze, it’s time to get into part one of where your money is going. In this part I simply looked at home much the allocated funds for each college went up by from 2007-2008 to 2008-2009. If the percent change was 4.5% or less I consider it spending for maintaining the college. If the percent increase was over 4.5% I consider it additional spending. Let me stress, I’m not passing judgment on the additional spending colleges, I’m simply pointing out that they’re receiving more money than it should cost to maintain their college. Certainly colleges will need additional spending to expand, and expansion is a good thing, but I wouldn’t be able to pass judgment on an increase in allocation without seeing the spending rolls.

Of the 18 colleges listed in the budget, six of them (Agriculture and Natural Resources, Arts and Letters, Business, Communication Arts and Sciences, and Social Science), saw an increase of less than 4.5%. 12 colleges (Education, Engineering, Human Medicine, Music, Natural Science, Nursing, Honors, Osteopathic Medicine, Residential College in Arts and Humanities, James Madison, Lyman Briggs, and Veterinary Medicine) saw an increase of more than 4.5%.

After determining which colleges received additional spending, I broke down the spending increase for each item listed in their budget. My goal was to find a pattern among all of the colleges; and that’s exactly what I found.

The common thread was a line in the budget named “Dean Special.” I’ll explain what exactly that means a little later. 11 colleges had this category listed in their budget, in every college that saw an increase in spending under the level of maintaining (4.5%), they saw a decrease in the “Dean Special” allocation. And it wasn’t just a decrease, it was a decrease of an astounding 47.75% on average.

Six of the seven colleges that saw an increase of 4.5% saw an increase in the “Dean Special” category. Five of those seven saw an increase greater than 10%. The average increase for a college over the 4.5% level in the “Dean Special” category was 17.05%.

So I saw a clear pattern; when “dean special” spending went up, the college was allocated money for additional spending. So it stands to reason that I ask what exactly dean special is.

I emailed the Office of Planning and Budgets and Brent Johnston, Assistant Budget Officer, replied to my email. He gave me a decent overview of exactly what universities use the “dean special” category for.

Thanks for your question. There are numerous elements that make up the components of most “Special” accounts. First, as colleges experience turn over with professors, the recruitment process can take upwards of a year. When colleges experience these openings, they will typically allocate the salary dollars to their “special” account in order to utilize them to fund temporary replacements, etc. Secondly, “Dean’s Special” funds are often related to “Off Campus Credit Instruction” (OCCI). When a college offers course through the web, or off campus, and students take those courses who are not also taking on-campus classes, a portion of the revenue from those offerings are passed to the college. These funds are available for the Dean, and their college, to use on expenditures for offering these courses, and other strategic and programmatic priorities. Finally, most colleges utilize these accounts to retain some degree of fiscal flexibility in order to be able address unforeseen needs. The most common occurrence in this regard is funding for additional sections of classes if initial enrollment projections are low. In all cases, these dollars are budgeted as “salary” as most expenditures from these areas will be related to compensation and, as a result, this is the most accurate allocation. However, should the expenses be related to another expenditure type, they can be reallocated for that use.

Basically I’ll sum up that entire explanation in a few words; it’s a safety net. If a professor leaves, they can utilize that line in the budget for temporary professor’s salaries. They can use that category for wiggle room spending, and revenue from online courses paid by non-university students is allocated there was well.

In total the “Dean Special” category is allocated $6,273,078.

And that’s where your money is going. Well, at least some of it.

–jb

Well kinda….okay not really at all.

The first line in a recent State News article reads…

ASMSU hopes to ban exotic animal acts from MSU.

Well thank God! I’m glad they’re not pressing Simon on the budget, that’s not worth their time. I’m sure students are more concerned with exotic animal acts on campus than paying more tuition next year.

Speaking of Simon and the budget, she did present to ASMSU about the budget, and according to Student Assembly Chairperson Michael Webber she was “frank” about the troubles that are ahead.

“There’s not a gray area about what’s going to have to happen, so she’s letting students know that there are tough times ahead,” Student Assembly Chairperson Michael Webber said. “She’s being frank about it.”

So exactly what does that mean? I understand that it’s going to be a tough road ahead, after all the state is potentially cutting funding by $9 million, but are we going to see a tuition increase or are we going to see the university step up to the plate and actually cut spending? Simon didn’t answer those questions at the meeting, she simply said it was going to be a tough time.

According to the updated budget, MSU would have to cut 703 faculty members or raise tuition 8.9 percent, but Simon said the university wouldn’t go to either extreme.

Or, as we’ve laid out before, they could cut fringe benefits by 5%, or they could take the Spartan Review’s budget proposals and cut spending by nearly $10 million. I don’t think that Simon is going to cut faculty by 703 members, but the world wouldn’t stop rotating if she slashed a few non-instructional jobs.

At the ASMSU meeting Simon laid out some goals for Michigan State for the future, and one is very vague.

Simon said the university has three goals during the current economic crisis: remain a top 100 university in the world, build Michigan’s future and keep land-grant values.

“Build Michigan’s future.” What the hell does that mean? How about not raise tuition as one of those goals during the economic crisis?

When the 2009-2010 budget is finally released I’ll be taking a close look at it and I’ll compare it to the previous year’s budget (2008-2009) and see what the university decided to increase funding for and what got the cut.

–jb

Just wanted to let everyone know that I’m still working on the review of Michigan State University’s budget. I’ve been in Washington D.C. for sometime in February and then I got sick, but I’m all better now and the review continues.

At this point I’ve identified that spending has gone up, quite a bit as a matter of fact, and it’s now my goal to determine where that money is going.

Just last night I went through the entire 2008-2009 budget and identified the programs and items that increased from the 2007-2008 budget. Today I’m beginning to go through once again and determine by what percent each of those items has increased. If it increased by anything lower than 4% I consider it insignificant.

I just want to stress, I’m not passing judgment on any of these increases at this point, I’m simply identifying what has gone up in spending. I consider 4% and below to be a reasonable increase to maintain operations. Therefore anything above that level I would consider additional spending.

I’ll have the results of this section of the review later this week.

–jb