IN BRIEF: Faculty buyouts are result of continued budget cuts

July 28, 2008 by Sharief Ali and Samantha Williams 

On July 19, UNLV President David B. Ashley announced that the university is offering buyouts to nearly 300 professional faculty and staff, 200 of which are tenured faculty.

“We need to develop some flexibility for what’s coming down the road,” Ashley told the Las Vegas Review-Journal. “We wouldn’t do this if we didn’t have financial stress right now.”

Ninety-seven employees have already been offered buyouts in the spring and summer. In the future, buyouts may be offered to classified staff, which includes mostly lower-level office workers and support staff.

Individuals who take the offer would get 110.5 percent of their salary for the next year. Their termination would begin almost immediately.

According to the Review-Journal, the additional 10.5 percent comes from the employee’s retirement account that UNLV would normally pay.

Ashley expects between 10 and 50 individuals to accept the buyout, which could save the university between $1 million and $5 million per year.

- Samantha Williams

CSUN proposes bylaws to help students amid budget cuts

The CSUN bylaws meeting, which was held July 25 covered several initiatives, including the CSUN Study Abroad Scholarship introduced by Senator Adrian Viesca. This bylaw will introduce a new scholarship that will grant scholarship awards to students who are studying abroad.

Under the proposed bylaw, $20,000 from the total CSUN budget received from student fees would go to the scholarship.

The next action item was senate bylaw 89, also known as the Experience Initiative. The purpose of this legislation is to establish an experience-based system of compensation that will incorporate a cap on Grants-in-Aid awarded to CSUN Officers.

“With the budget cuts and students feeling the crunch, we need to be held accountable for everything we do, and that’s what the reform of this system does. We should all be paid on what we can provide in terms of experience,” Student Body President Adam Cronis said.

-Sharief Ali

[EDITOR'S NOTE: This article has been edited to correct the spelling of CSUN Sen. Adrian Viesca.]