Budgets are moral documents. The UCCS Executive Leadership Team claims there is a budgetary shortfall, yet information shared about the University’s finances has been staggered and limited. The lack of effective communication or guidance is causing distrust and frustration across the campus faculty, staff and students. Colleges and departments are being ordered to make significant cuts without clarity or transparency regarding how their required quotas are being determined. Additionally, with no meaningful seat at the table, campus workers are effectively sidelined in all matters of budgetary design, forced to make what recommendations they can in only a limited timeline, only to then be ignored as decisions have already been made behind closed doors by executive leadership.

We have experienced this before. Previous budget concerns have come up in the past as UCCS workers continue to witness the revolving door of administrative positions on campus. The consistent absence of unified vision, coherent strategy, and lack of consideration for the needs of students and workers have proved detrimental to our campus’s ability to maintain fiscal responsibility. There is a clear need for structural change in the decision making process for the budget.

UCCS workers teach, study, research, clean, build, support, cook, and work for our community. UCCS workers are the reason this university functions and thrives.

Before any further decisions are made around leadership’s budget mismanagement, we demand that workers across job classifications, expertise, colleges, and departments have voting positions on what the next steps look like. We make this demand because we, the workers across UCCS, know this institution. We know how to improve it with insight into what has worked in the past along with what has failed. Only open transparency of the issues, along with a say in leadership decisions, can solve these problems. This systemic change, and giving a voice to those that make this campus what it is, will facilitate stability in a turbulent time.