All employees of South Carolina State University will have to take 15 days of mandatory furlough before June 30, interim President Ernest A. Finney informed faculty and staff at an assembly Wednesday.

"The alternative would have been to have laid off approximately 200 employees," Finney said.

The furlough will save about $2.2 million and is necessary to balance the university's budget after falling revenues led the state to impose two midyear state budget cuts, said Dr. Andrew Hugine, interim executive vice president.

"(Tuesday's) budget cut was about 800-plus thousand dollars. The previous one (in December) was about $1.2 million. So that's well over $2 million for the two cuts collectively," Hugine said.

S.C. State had an operating budget of $26.1 million in 2001-02. Tuesday's state funding cut brought this year's operating budget down to $21.7 million.

The university receives about 33 percent of its funding from the state. Other funds come from tuition, alumni contributions, foundations and corporations.

"We must come to June 30 with no red ink in our budget," Finney said, because state entities are prohibited from running deficits.

"This is not a decision that has been made haphazardly," he said, adding that if anyone has an alternate plan, "write it down, sign your name to it and drop it off at the office. We will consider any plan."

SCSU is not by any means alone in its struggle to make do with less. "The economy of the state of South Carolina is being challenged. ... Every entity is being called upon to make sacrifices," Finney said.

Already the university has:

-- Frozen hiring and travel.

-- Postponed maintenance.

-- Deferred major equipment purchases.

-- Reduced cell phone use.

-- Increased workloads, including teaching loads and class sizes.

"These cost-cutting measures have been inadequate to meet the shortfalls," Finney said, requiring more drastic measures.

"We had considered a reduction in force, but we have made the decision that would be too extreme and adversely impact our mission," said the retired Supreme Court chief justice.

"The university is committed to ensuring the quality of education for all students and that the quality of education will not be adversely affected in any manner as we go through this trying time," Finney said.

"We have therefore decided that the appropriate method of reaching our goal ... (is) to institute mandatory furloughs of the entire university staff," he said.

The "stopgap measure and last resort" is to be implemented in a "fair and impartial" manner, Finney said.

The mandatory furlough will include all employees regardless of source of funds, place of work or tenure status and will include faculty, staff, administrators, classified and unclassified employees, temporary employees and the president.

Dr. Walter McArthur, Faculty Senate president, said the furlough is "a necessary evil. It's one of the things that has happened to us, and we must respond in the most appropriate way, and this is what we've chosen to do. It's not a matter of choice here. It's a matter of doing and dealing, and this what we have to do, and this is how we're dealing."

"This of course was a last resort. The administration, in our viewpoint, really ran out of options," Maurice Washington, chairman of the SCSU Board of Trustees, said in a telephone interview.

"The board did not propose this as a solution; however, we fully support it as a means of addressing the ongoing state budget cuts," Washington said.

"The state has not experienced growth (in revenues) in the past four years, and the revenue projections for January are off by some $36 million," he said. The situation is not expected to improve anytime soon.

"In light of that, this (furlough) needed to happen sooner versus later," Washington said. "I would think that the worst is yet to come, so we need to be expecting the worst but praying for the best."

Trustee Arnold Collins, who attended the faculty meeting, also supports Finney's actions.

"We've got to do something, and this is the least painful way to do it," Collins said. "This is spreading the pain over the entire university, and that way, nobody'll have any catastrophic pain."

"I don't think it's going to be that painful on each individual, but yet collectively it'll make a big difference to the university, and it'll save everybody's job," Collins said, adding that dismissing employees is "too drastic for what we think is a temporary situation."

Finney asked the employees to "make those sacrifices in the spirit we request of you" and to "protect our mission" as an institution dedicated to providing affordable and accessible higher education opportunities.

"We will do the very best we can with the resources we are provided," Finney said. "Together we can overcome this obstacle and continue on with our jobs and move forward into the future."

T&D Staff Writer Lee Hendren can be reached by e-mail at lhendren@timesanddemocrat.com or by phone at 803-533-5552.

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