OBSERVER file photo Students march outside Fenton Hall at SUNY Fredonia on Dec. 7.

For many in the SUNY Fredonia community, the recently announced program cuts were a wake-up call. For my family and I, it was deja vu — a painful reminder of a chapter in our lives that we thought was over. Although currently tenured at SUNY Fredonia, I still consider myself an “academic refugee.”

Many consider tenure to be a guarantee, but at my previous, small, state-funded university in Illinois, it did not save me. In addition to tenure, I had also received grants and won awards for my teaching; nonetheless I found myself laid off at my previous university due to ‘budget cuts.’ Without naming names, that university’s administration was a clown show — I have vicariously enjoyed watching the allegations of harassment against my former president come to light (and his eventual resignation). Things here at SUNY Fredonia do not approach the awfulness of the atmosphere there — there is so much good here worth saving. I would like to take this opportunity to tell you what I have seen from my unique perspective.

While it is difficult to get any two people to agree on anything these days, the faculty here are united. We all recognize that there is hard work to be done, and we are willing to pitch in to do it. Our students are amazing. The student response and resistance to the announcement last week was heartwarming — it was something that I did not see at my previous home. In addition, the university is in great physical shape — it is not the victim of decades of deferred maintenance.

At stake is accessibility of education. Rural campuses and urban campuses have different costs associated with them — and these cannot always be measured in dollars. The ‘cost’ that SUNY Fredonia has (as well as SUNY Potsdam) is that we can never attract the same numbers other urban campuses can. We are different, and that is good. SUNY Fredonia represents opportunity for students in the region. Without SUNY Fredonia in the area, I know at least one of my mentees would not be in college due to their close ties to the region. Forcing rural campuses to meet the same metrics as urban campuses is a clear message that accessibility does not matter, and that our region does not matter to the SUNY system or to the state. Think about what the education landscape will look like if we allow our regional campuses to slowly be gnawed away by the urban enrollment juggernauts.

We are being told that the cuts are proposed to save money. This is not true. One of the degrees that has been proposed for cuts is the BFA in sculpture. Though the program has low enrollment, cutting it does not save any money because the classes need to be taught for other degrees. We’re not saving money; we’re cutting opportunities. And, cutting opportunities, without saving money, is long-term sabotage. This is exactly what happened at my previous university — one of the first cuts was a small certificate program in paleontology. All the classes for this program needed to be taught for other degrees that were kept but, on paper, the certificate program looked low-enrolled. This cut opportunities — especially for my geology department, and led directly to my layoff and the eventual shuttering of the department. Do choices like these mean that our administration, or that of the SUNY system, cannot do math? Or, are they using dynamite when a scalpel would be more appropriate? If the cuts do not accomplish the stated purpose, then we must ask WHY.

President Kolison, to his credit, announced these cuts in person — something that never happened at my previous university. He is in the unenviable position of solving a SUNY system funding problem at the SUNY Fredonia level. And, the metrics that our administration is being told to use to solve the problem (cutting low enrolled programs) do not actually do what they intend. The SUNY system is now acting surprised to find that by not feeding SUNY Fredonia adequately, it is starving. The analogy we often hear at this point is that we need an amputation to save the patient. We are suffering from an infection–we are financially starving! An amputation is not the solution. These cuts are designed to eliminate rural campuses systematically. To let that happen would be to put our region’s future at stake.

We need to push our local SUNY administration to fight back and stand with us. We need to push our local legislators to ask the SUNY system chancellor, John B. King Jr., for answers. And, we need to let the SUNY system know that targeting regional SUNY schools will not lead to shared prosperity for our state.

At SUNY Fredonia, we make a personalized, experiential education a priority, and we create research opportunities for our students that are only available to graduate students at other universities. This is something worth saving.

Thomas A. Hegna, Ph.D, is department coordinator and associate professor for the Geology & Environmental Science Department at SUNY Fredonia.