At our last meeting at WOU on February 2nd and 3rd, IFS was greeted by President Youngblood and by Provost Minahan. We heard a great deal about the growth and development of the university. But we also learned a great deal more than we wanted to about the campus's preparations for the coming budget crisis. We had a very productive conversation with Jim Willis of the board about the board's obligations and heard from OUS legal counsel Ben Rawlins about the new grievance procedures currently under construction. We also were tutored by Dave Barrows, the PSU-AAUP's lobbyist about the progress of the session, the situation of the OUS budget in the legislative process to date, and what we might do to encourage a favorable outcome for it. Saturday we spent a large part of our time with John Wykoff of the Oregon Student Association discussing the concerns of the students about the future of higher education and, again, what we as faculty can do to bring a successful conclusion to the session.

Over and over at this meeting we heard a couple of refrains. First, we heard that higher education must give a significantly better account of itself for the turnout at the higher education rally on March 6th than it did at even the highly successful event of 1999. Second, we heard from our speakers that we had to be advocates during the rest of the session for higher education, that, indeed, we must be relentless in our contacts with legislators.

As we discussed these points and their meaning, it became clear that we have a long way to go before we achieve our budgetary goals. That, of course, is true of every legislative session, but it seems doubly true of this one, in which so much is at risk. Like many of you, faculty recall the heart-stopping days of Measure 5. Then the stakes seemed immense. But, in retrospect, at least Measure 5 was phased in over several biennia. This time, we seem to be facing a Wily Coyote-like drop off a budgetary cliff that will be immediate, abrupt, and likely to undo all that we accomplished with the largesse of the last session.

Because of the urgency of the situation, I have been directed by my IFS colleagues to make several comments to you about the difficulties we face at the Legislature. One thing we heard repeatedly in our discussions was that many legislators are ready to work with OUS to provide a level of funding that will prevent the kinds of difficulties that can be foreseen in a bare bones budget of the kind proposed by Governor Kitzhaber. But we also heard that they won't be able to step forward if higher education doesn't fight vigorously for what it needs. As we all know, advocates of many worthy agencies and causes are haunting the halls of the capitol making their case for their budget. We as faculty must, we were told, be prepared to work hard to educate legislators to the necessity of funding higher education at the level necessary to accomplish our mission. As a result, we have gone back to our campuses and begun to organize other faculty and students to make as great an effort as possible on March 6. Moreover, we have pledged to hold the April IFS meeting at the Capitol in order to visit with legislators and make them aware of the solidarity of higher education and our support for a vote favoring our funding needs.

But it was put bluntly to us by the political operatives we heard from that, above all, our leaders (meaning you, the members of the board) must engage; that the legislators are waiting to hear from you to make the case for the system and are disappointed that they haven't so far. Simply put, they need your help to do the right thing.

We are well aware that the Board serves at the pleasure of the Governor and that OUS's request is not in line with his vision of the next budget. But we believe that ultimately you, like us, serve the people of Oregon first, not anyone's political agenda, however worthy it may be. It is tragic that, once again, we are all forced into a zero-sum fiscal game, replete with winners and losers, but we in higher education have as just a claim on the resources of the state as others now making their cases in Salem. We will do nothing but good for Oregonians. You know the features of our arguments as well as I do, so I won't rehearse them here. But, clearly, our agenda is saleable by every politician to every constituency in every precinct of this state. Everyone everywhere who aspires to a quality higher education needs access in the form of reasonable tuition. Everyone from each legislative district in Oregon is entitled to the best, most up-to-date programs we can mount. Each Oregonian who wants to learn from us is entitled to the best faculty, attracted to our institutions by a reasonable salary structure.

This all comes at an inopportune time, we know. OUS is adding a wing to the house when it can't seem to meet the basic mortgage payments. But it is precisely because of the reality of Bend and the promise of extending a real four-year education to a specific geographic constituency that we need our leadership to articulate the strongest possible case for not destroying the higher ed budget. As the designated stewards of this patrimony, you are positioned to make the most cogent, dispassionate, and persuasive statement on this matter.

Provost Minahan of WOU made a telling point, I felt, when he said in his talk to us that as an ethicist he thought the moral thing for us to do was to make our strongest case. He said he was confident that the legislators would make the right choices. No doubt it will be a daunting task for them to line up the priorities that sort best with the values of the political culture, the real needs of the society, and their own political destinies. But if we make the best case we can, we may be confident that we will have done the right thing by depicting the true needs of a first rate higher education system. To do that, the strong leadership of the Board is a necessity. Listening to John Minanhan, who identified himself as a Catholic thinker, I was struck by the congruence of his views with those of a thinker from my religious tradition, Rabbi Akiva, who seems to have summed up our mutual perspective succinctly: "if I am not for myself, who will be for me? If not now, when?"