Budget crunched

 Listen, I know all about the money squeeze in higher ed these days. That's because I got caught up in one.

Six years ago my position as a marketing writer at Manchester University was eliminated in a university-wide austerity push, and I understood completely. Unless you lived under a rock in the Mojave or something, it was almost impossible to work at a small liberal arts school like MU and not know that, as at almost every other liberal arts school these days, the money was getting tight. I have been known to be oblivious on occasion, but I wasn't that oblivious.

So when they called me in and gave me the news, I was surprised but not shocked. I got the math: In my department I was by far the most expendable worker bee, and (if I want to be honest) probably an overpaid worker bee to boot. Manchester was like that; it was both good for me at that time in my life, and incredibly good to me.

So, yeah, the budget cuts announced by Purdue-Fort Wayne this week didn't exactly make my jaw drop. And, yes, that includes the school's decision to eliminate its baseball and softball programs.

See, because that rock in the Mojave is not my home address, I know this is happening everywhere, not just at PFW. Aside from the revenue-drivers -- football and men's basketball -- every Division I athletic program is in the crosshairs these days. Tennis, track-and-field, cross-country ... you name it, they're disappearing somewhere virtually every week.

This week, it's baseball and softball at PFW. And 45 jobs elsewhere, because when the pot is $6 million light (as PFW claims), something's gotta go. And, frankly, PFW carrying 16 varsity sports was probably a bridge too far for a regional campus with its resources.

This doesn't make it any easier for the players and coaches who poured their hearts and souls into those programs. It sucks, that part of it. And it uproots the lives of young people at a time when, in a very real sense, they're just beginning those lives.

It also doesn't help when their university breaks the news to them as clumsily as PFW did.

It takes an Olympian feat of non-communication, after all, when you suddenly announce you're dropping two varsity sports and even your athletic director is blindsided. Or so said PFW AD Kelley Hartley Hutton, who admitted to the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette the news came "pretty much out of the blue."

What the hell, people? Seriously, what the hell?

And as to those 45 job cuts ...

None of those, apparently, were high-dollar positions; those axed were worker bees, mostly, with families to support and household budgets of their own to meet. A fair number also were apparently involved in the university's diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, which the Regime in Washington (and its subsidiary Regime in Indianapolis) has declared verboten because, I don't know, diversity, equity and inclusion are un-American and somehow racist.

At any rate, it makes you wonder just how much of a dent eliminating those jobs will make in the $6-million shortfall. It also makes you wonder (though not really) why PFW Chancellor Ron Elsenbaumer chose to make the announcements via official statements instead of out in the open where local media could ask questions about them.

Questions like, oh, say ...

So, Chancellor, if making up this shortfall is so critical you have to eliminate two varsity sports and 45 jobs, may we ask how much of a pay cut you'll be taking to help out?

Also, can we infer from the cuts that PFW has decided diversity, equity and inclusion are no longer priority values? Or are you just letting yourselves get knuckled by Fearless Leader and the Regime like so many others these days?

Inquiring minds want to know.