The Daily Orange

Syracuse University laid off 48 employees Wednesday in order to meet an $8 million budget cut for the 2008-2009 fiscal year.

Chancellor Nancy Cantor summarized SU's dire financial situation and outlined measures the university is taking to make ends meet in an e-mail sent last week to the university community. SU made budget cuts and eliminated 71 vacant positions.

The cuts will save $8 million for the 2008-2009 fiscal year and $11 million for the 2009-2010 fiscal year.

Kevin Quinn, vice president of public affairs, said no money will be taken from the 2008-2009 budgets for any of SU's nine schools and colleges.

Cuts for school and college budgets have yet to be announced because the economic need is not known, Quinn said.

Cantor wrote that she did not want to cut the schools' and colleges' budgets yet, for fear of slowing their "academic momentum."
The numbers announced Wednesday are the first of many more formidable budget cuts that the university will see in the next year, Quinn said.

During the next two months, Cantor will meet with the University Senate Budget Committee, the Responsibility Center Management Committee, the deans of each school and college and the trustees to decide on the budget cuts for the schools and colleges.
These figures are dependent on the amount of students enrolled for the 2009-2010 academic year.

The SU Library was hit the hardest by the layoffs.

Darle Balfoort, a library technician at Bird
Library, said the department was forced to eliminate 25 positions and lay off 23 employees, some who had worked there for more than 20 years.

The library cut $1,919,300 in salaries and fringe benefits for the 2009-2010 budget, said Dale King, interim director of organization services, in an e-mail.
Suzanne Thorin, dean of libraries, said many of the employees laid off were library technicians, whom the department tried to replace by spreading administrative responsibilities like cataloguing among the remaining staff.

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