Students and staff urged the University to reconsider salary policies, increase funding for global warming initiatives and provide a stipend for international students during winter break at last night's open meeting of the University's Priorities Committee (PriCom).
The annual meeting was meant to let PriCom, which reviews the University's operating budget and makes recommendations to President Tilghman, give an account of the budget so that community members — fewer than 10 of whom showed up — can voice their opinions.
Associate Provost for Finance Steven Gill, a two-decade veteran of PriCom, said the meeting, which was held in McCosh 28, had "middle to low turnout."
Significantly, this is the first year the University's projected operating budget has exceeded $1 billion.
PriCom's purview includes tuition fees, salaries and the budget for campus renovations, and it has representatives from faculty, administrators, undergraduate students and graduate students. It reviews requests submitted to the committee by administrators.
Gill said the committee was born of the campus unrest and "questioning of authority" that came in the wake of the secret bombing of Cambodia in 1969.
Patricia Gibney, a University librarian and one of only a handful of staff members at the meeting, voiced what she called "a little bit of dissatisfaction over there" about salary pools.
"There are 100 librarians, and we all end up on a spreadsheet, and some of us, in the past few years, our raises have been below the rate of inflation as I calculated," Gibney said.
"If we are going to have forced rankings," Gibney added, referring to a performance management principle that ties salary increases to performance, "I would like to see a bigger salary pool."
Graduate students, who have often been a fixture at recent PriCom open meetings, had various questions and suggestions for the committee.
Shin-Yi Lin GS, the chair of the Graduate Student Government, thanked the committee for its work on the Degree Completion Enrollment program for graduate students, which allows them to "keep their student status past their program length."
Tetse Ukueberuwa GS, head of the newly-formed Princeton branch of Students United for a Responsible Global Environment (SURGE), said she wanted to see the University "take the lead" on addressing global warming.
"We don't, to my knowledge, have a [budget] request directly relevant [to global warming issues] pending before the committee," University Provost and PriCom chair Christopher Eisgruber '83 said, though he noted that Vice President for Facilities Michael McKay and Executive Vice President Mark Burstein "characterize ... discussions [with SURGE] as productive."
USG vice president Rob Biederman '08, a former member of PriCom, was the only undergraduate student to speak at the meeting. He urged the committee to recommend a measure that would give international students $400 for winter break and inquired whether the committee was working with cellular providers to get the campus better coverage.
Currently, only Verizon Wireless offers reliable service on campus. An undergraduate member of the committee said that the other companies were working on the issue, and it will be "only a matter of time" before service from other carriers improves.
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