Professors and students at UH Manoa are taking issue with budget cuts they say unfairly target their campus.
Administrators made a presentation on the budget crunch today, welcoming input and ideas but saying ultimately 66 million dollars has to go.
They packed the house to hear the nitty gritty about dwindling state funds -- what's going wrong and what could mitigate it.
"I'm not going to speculate on external factors beyond my control which might impact the situation one way or the other," says Kathy Cutshaw, U.H. Manoa Vice Chancellor.
They opened the window for ideas, and in they flew in often heated exchanges.
"May I finish, what I suggest whether it's the executive committee or the faculty as a whole that they make a proposal on however we want to go forward from here," says Reed Dasenbrock, U.H. Manoa Vice Chancellor.
"your answers today have been unfortunately a little vague, and beating around the bush," says Richard Tabalno, U.H. Manoa student.
Questions came across the board, including should more labor savings be taken from administration, as professors negotiate their own lower pay.
"This whole big central administration that's incredibly expensive, and we can undo it just as easily as it got done," says Catherine Fulford, U.H. Professor.
And, is too much being cut from manoa and not enough elsewhere?
"What's our plan for either winning a greater share of the pie in the system or losing with at least blood on the wall," says Robert Perkinson, U.H. Professor.
"We should be talking about putting on hold building new campuses until such time as we can afford to staff them," says Lilikala Kameeleihiwa, U.H. Professor.
"We are 53 percent of the UH budget and we took 73 percent of the cut. that is not far. It is not right," says Meda Chesher, U.H. Professor.
What's fair is still being hashed out... in the end one thing is indisputable.
"We have to figure out how we operate with 66 million fewer state dollars," says Dasenbrock.
There are tuition increases projected, but even taking all of that into account, a shortfall still lingers well into 2012.
