University of Puget Sound is not immune to the financial and enrollment realities facing higher education nationally, and as campus leaders we have a responsibility to maintain the academic and financial health of the university. For this reason, I charged the AAAPR Committee with providing their recommendations for how best to balance the academic priorities and financial reality of the institution given the current $10 million structural budget deficit. I thoughtfully considered their recommendations in light of our strategic plan goals, shared their report with the campus community for additional...

At the October 2022 meeting of the Board of Trustees, the Board voted on the President’s recommendations to move the university towards financial equilibrium by the end of Fiscal Year 2026. General bullet points were shared with the university community. The plan was not. Faculty requested to see the full report and supporting documents that were provided by the President and ultimately approved by the Board. To date, the President has not shared those documents with the faculty. This is a departure from the transparency and collaborative process the president...

From Monica DeHart, Nancy Bristow, Robin Jacobson, and Siddharth Ramakrishnan; all are previous members of the AAAPRC. In the hopes of clarifying the work and recommendations of the AAAPRC, we would note that our committee was charged with closing the university’s $10 million deficit by Fiscal Year 2025. Therefore, our recommendations to reduce 35 FTE faculty and consolidate programs were in response to that call, rather than an independent finding about what would be good for the health of our liberal arts institution. That proposal sought both to help bridge...

By: Ainsley Feeney     Halloween is the spookiest time of year, with scary movie marathons, candy-induced stomachaches, and creative costumes. However, for many people, Halloween’s biggest fright comes in a much more real form than any ghost story – cultural appropriation.   Cultural appropriation is taking aspects from a culture that is not your own, usually as a form of mockery. This can take the form of wearing culturally important clothing, jewelry, or hairstyles, speaking in an accent or language from another culture, or playing up cultural stereotypes in a...