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Missouri Legislature Makes Punitive Budget Cuts
The Missouri House of Representatives voted last spring to cut money from the University of Missouri budget to register disapproval of several faculty and staff actions.
The representatives rescinded $500,000 to punish the School of Journalism after the news director of its television station instructed staff not to wear symbols such as American flag pins or red, white, and blue ribbons when appearing on the air. In an e-mail memo to staff, the news director wrote that the reason for the policy was that news broadcasts were not the appropriate place to make personal statements of support for causes.
In a separate act, the legislature voted to cut $120,000 from the university’s budget to show disapproval of Elizabeth Van Uum, an administrator at the university’s St. Louis campus. Van Uum was accused by representatives of performing tasks associated with Democratic Party politics on work time, which she denies. Another $100,000 was cut from the budget to register disapproval of a 1999 scholarly article by Harris Mirkin, a professor of political science at the university’s Kansas City campus. According to press accounts, the article suggested that cultural assumptions about pedophilia and children’s sexuality be re-examined and that they might, like attitudes toward gender roles and gay rights, be expected to change in time. Critics characterized the article as a defense of pedophilia, and several legislators said that Mirkin should be fired. Administrators at the university defended his right to publish controversial works, as did many students and newspaper editorials. The campus AAUP chapter issued a resolution of support.
The punitive cuts were reduced in conference negotiations between the Missouri House and Senate to a total of $200,000. Like many other states, Missouri faces a financial crisis, and these cuts constitute a small proportion of the money withdrawn from higher education this year. The president of the University of Missouri system called the fiscal 2002 cuts—which totaled $80 million for the university system and $286 million for all state institutions combined—“catastrophic for public higher education.”
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