Mirror - Vol. 37, No. 06 - October 19, 2011

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THEUF MIRROR
fairfieldmirror.com
The Independent Student Newspaper
of Fairfield University
The Reflection of Fairfield
NEWS:
IT'S YOUR TURN
TO COME OUT OF
THE CLOSET
P.5
Fairfield Website/Contributed Photo
OPINION:
POST No BILLS!
(OR ANYTHING ELSE)
P.7
^J&1
%3^ *
Tom McKiver/The Mirror
MUSICAL RETURNS
TO THEATRE
FAIRFIELD
P.11
Theater Fairfield/Contributed Photo
SPORTS:
LET THE
MADNESS BEGIN
P.20
Aisha Faulkner/The Mirror
INDEX
Opinion • Page 6
The Vine-Page 7
Coffee Break-Page 13
Sports-Page 16
Fairfield Facing $4.3 Million Budget Gap
BY MIKAELATIERNEY
EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
Fairfield is currently facing
a $4.3 million budget gap for the
current fiscal year of 2012, accord-ing
to senior University admin-istrators.
A solution of potential
cuts and financial changes has
accounted for the gap, but details
are not yet publicly available.
"Whenever anybody faces a
budget gap...there are two ways
of dealing with it: increase your
revenues, or try to decrease your
expense," Fr. Von Arx said."Here at
Fairfield...we're trying to do both
of those things."
A student open budget
forum was held on Tuesday night
concerning the operating budget
for the 2012 fiscal year, hosted by
President Jeffrey von Arx, SJ., Dr.
Thomas Pellegrino, vice president
for student affairs, and Julie Dolan,
vice president of finance.
Fairfield "realized the issue
early in the summer"and has tried
to "address it for several months,"
Fr. Von Arx said.The ultimate goal
in the rearranging of University
finances is to have the most mini-mal
impact possible to academics
or student experience on campus.
On March 31 st of this year, the
balanced budget was approved by
the Board of Trustees. At this time,
there was not a gap in the budget.
However, due to changes in the
national economy along with the
changing enrollment numbers
at the University, a budget gap
emerged.This gap was discovered
already well into the fiscal year,
leaving the University in a bit of a
bind. Fairfield only has until the
end of June - this current fiscal
year of 2012 - to fix the problem
before entering the 2013 fiscal year.
Undergraduate tuition and
fees were budgeted to be $132.2
million, but were actually pro-jected
to amount to $128.5 million.
Room and board were budgeted
to bring in $31.5 million and were
projected to actually bring in $31
million, a very minor difference.
83% of the revenues for fiscal
year 2012 come from net tuition,
room and board, while gifts and
endowment comprised 10% of rev-enue
and the remaining 7% were
from other sources. Expenses,
however, were more significant
than revenue this year. 57% of
expenses went to compensation
(including salaries), and 22% went
to other non-compensation areas.
Operations and maintenance,
interest and depreciation account
for 19% of expenses, while 2%
go to operations and enrollment
contingencies.
As outlined in by Fr. Von Arx
during the meeting, there are two
ways of dealing with the problem;
increase revenue or decrease
expenses. Fairfield is attempting to
utilize both methods to solve the
budget gap.
"Senior leadership has been
spending many, many hours
grappling with this issue...frankly,
it's not easy," Dolan explained.
"It's not easy to make that kind of
expense reduction without sacri-
BUDGET|MGE3
Tom McKiver/The Mirror
Vice President of Finance Julie Dolan presents updates of the University budget to students on Oct. 18th. Fairfield has a budget gap of $4.3 million.
Fairfield University Experiences a Burglar
BY MAGGIE ANDREW
CONTRIBUTING WRITER
A break-in occurred over
the Columbus Day holiday on
the first floor of Canisius Hall,
with laptops and cash the pri-mary
items reported as stolen.
A professor first notified
Public Safety of the robbery,
according to Frank Ficko,
the associate director of the
Department of Public Safety.
Items that were taken include
four laptops, an undetermined
amount of cash, and an exter-nal
drive. The rooms that were
broken into were the suites and
offices of various faculty and
administration on the first floor
of the building.
The rooms were broken
into using a tool, most likely
a screwdriver or a crowbar.
Laptops were believed to have
been the targets of the break-in,
as various other screens and
monitors were left untouched.
The incident is believed
to have taken place anywhere
between Friday evening and 4
p.m. on Monday, October 10,
when the robberies were report-ed.
According to Ficko, Canisius
Hall was open on Monday for a
routine academic schedule be-cause
a few classes were sched-uled
to make up for lost time
due to Hurricane Irene.The
building is also regularly used
by outside groups and organiza-tions
over the weekends.
Signs on the doors of aca-demic
buildings and a Public
Safety Alert e-mail notified
students of the situation. Those
students who remained on cam-pus
for the long weekend were
especially shocked to hear of
the incident. Christine Villa '14
said, "I was surprised to hear of
the break-in. I would hope that
it wasn't a member of our own
community, because why would
they do that to the school?"
Due to the holiday week-end,
there were fewer students
on campus than usual. Only
the few make-up classes and
regularly scheduled groups had
access to Canisius, which is
also protected by a necessary
swipe-in authorization for the
hours when the building is not
generally in use.
A majority of the academic
buildings are used for different
reasons on the weekends, but
Ficko hopes that some future
restrictions to gaining access to
these buildings may be imple-mented
to avoid more thefts.
Ficko said he is not at lib-erty
to discuss details of the in-vestigation
as it is still ongoing,
but encourages students and
members of the community to
report suspicious behavior. He
says that Public Safety officers
count on the Fairfield commu-nity
to provide extra eyes and
ears around campus to avoid
future incidents.