By Staff editorial
Cuts are all UNO’s budget is seeing these days. The cuts are not just trimming the fat either. They are eliminating entire programs.
The Learning Center was completely shut down without any warning. Employees were escorted out and told they the no longer worked there. With a slam and lock of the gate it was all over with.
Students will no longer have access to tutoring facilities. International students and those with learning disabilities will now be unable to receive academic help.
Perhaps just as unforgivable as the lack of access to tutoring, test preparation and the other services the Learning Center offered is the way its employees were treated when they were discharged.
They weren’t given so much as a moment’s notice nor time to gather up their personal belongings as the gates lowered, cutting off their access.
Employees of the Learning Center were told they would have to "make arrangements" to get their personal belongings at a later time and date.
This scenario wasn’t only seen in the closing of the Learning Center. Across campus, employees were discharged in less-than-humane manners.
Employees – some unsuspecting, some not – went to their superiors’ offices to have "meetings," within which they were discharged.
After these meetings, employees’ keys were taken from them and they were not allowed back into their offices unescorted. This even happened to a person who had worked at the university for 26 years.
We don’t know what human resources personnel or administrators were afraid would happen if the terminated employees were let back into their offices but it probably wouldn’t have been as "humiliating" — as one terminated employee called it — for the university as it was for those who were let go.
Another equally frustrating result of the budget cuts is the elimination of English 1050, a "beginning course designed to help students improve comprehension and retention, establish proper study techniques, develop vocabulary and increase reading speeds," according to the undergraduate course catalog.
The elimination of English 1050, like the elimination of the Learning Center, hurts students who need help the most.
Without the tutors of the Learning Center to help students who are struggling or remedial courses like English 1050 to get students who may be a bit behind up-to-speed, "at risk" students (as the university calls them) will be greatly affected.
Why does the university even accept "at risk" students if it isn’t going to provide the resources needed for the students to overcome the academic hurdles they face and succeed in the forum of higher education?
With enrollment the highest it has been in years, UNO seemed poised to raise it self to new heights. Then our happy little Unicameral forgot to carry the nine when making the budget. Now the university system has to suffer.
UNO is losing valuable educational resources, staff and everything else that made this school better than Metro.
This hardly seems fair since it wasn’t the university system’s fault the budget got out of whack in the first place.
A mind truly is a terrible thing to waste and here we are wasting them. Why? Because we are underfunded.
How are we supposed to become mature, well-learned adults when we are being denied proper access to a decent education?
We are all here attempting to better ourselves because we want to, not because we have to. Sadly, instead of spending our time as we should be — thinking about school — we’re left wondering how long will it be before we won’t even bother coming to class because we don’t have the means to learn properly?
