Budget blues

Vi Simpson, our state senator, sent us a message: "The budget will determine what increases in tuition support schools will receive over the next two years and how those dollars will be distributed."\nA fair but cold statement compared to the sentence just before when she gushes, "I will continue to push for the implementation of voluntary full-day kindergarten and other early childhood learning initiatives including a program to provide free reading books to children from birth to age five."\nThis year, higher education will lose the biannual budget battle to the wee ones. \nYour tuition is going to skyrocket, and the trustees will be forced to continue a sell-off of nonacademic service units to afford a bright future to the IU students of tomorrow -- the wee ones. Quoted in a Dec. 12, 2006, article in The Herald-Times, Stephen Ferguson, president of the IU board of trustees, explained that without access to millions of dollars available from outside contracting of auxiliary enterprises, IU "is unlikely to be able to afford needed projects, such as converting Franklin Hall to a humanities building and renovating Ballantine Hall." \nIn yet another "Daily Show" moment from the world of politics, Sen. Simpson sat for nine years on the State Budget Committee, the committee that chose to not pay appropriated funds to maintain our campus buildings. The State Budget Committee ran into a budget deficit during Simpson's tenure and looked to cut costs. Thus, our campus administration continues to put flowers and clocks on the campus exterior in what amounts to the architectural equivalent of Botox treatment -- at some point, you take a second look and gasp. \nThe trustees are trying to find a way to raise funds to reduce the need to charge you an additional fee for renovations like at Purdue University. Purdue has begun charging students an annual $250 repair and rehabilitation fee to generate $7.25 million to help fund needed campus improvements, including an overhaul of a heavily used lecture hall. And our elected state Sen. Simpson -- whose Senate biography proclaims she is "widely regarded as an expert on the state's finances" -- is the co-author of a public letter to IU President Adam Herbert that questions our board of trustees' effort to pursue funds.\nIt has begun a bandwagon appeal to the fears caused by the word "outsourcing" of which the Monroe County Council is only the latest to join. \nFolks -- the motor pool is not going to India. It may go to Enterprise. But hey, they pick you up. And more importantly, we will avoid another budgetary deficit tax on students like the athletics fee.\n"There is," Simpson writes, "no greater priority for our state government than to ensure that our children have the resources necessary to be successful in life." \nWe need Simpson to explain her cold shoulder to current IU students: "The budget will determine what increases in tuition support schools will receive."\nSen. Simpson, the budget does not write itself.