College Faculty discuss finances, bookstore's fate

Wednesday's College Faculty meeting was fairly routine; as is often the case, money was a dominant discussion topic.

A sparse, and for the most part, unenthusiastic gathering of faculty members convened for about an hour in King 106 in a meeting which began with a standard monthly report of the proceedings of the College Faculty council, which was presented by Al Matlin, associate professor of chemistry.

After Matlin's brief report, Andy Evans, vice president for finance and administration, presented the CF with a report on the Financial Health of the College. "The financial position is quite strong," he said, noting that the College's endowment has grown from 435 million dollars in June, 1998, to 488 million dollars in June, 1999. This is the third consecutive year that the endowment has grown by more than 50 million dollars.

Despite this good news, Evans said, "Some targets have yet to be realized." First of all, faculty salaries have increased for the past four years. They increased by seven percent for each of the first two years and six percent for each of the second two, for a total of 26 percent in four years.

In the same period, Evans said scholarship increases have become a worry. Despite this worry, he said, "The financial aid budget for the entering class has not been as high because of changes in financial aid." Bob Haslun, secretary of the College clarified this, explaining that last year there had been an overrun, and this year they are on target, with financial aid accounting for 25 percent.

Evans also referred to the controversial refurbishing of the exterior of the Rice building this summer in his report. The work cost 120 thousand dollars, although he pointed out that this was for the tuck-pointing of the stone, not its cleaning. "If this maintenance had not been done, we would have faced a much larger problem down the road." he said.

One major topic of discussion involved the salaries of the faculty and the Administrative and Professional Staff. The concern was that the two were not rising in step with each other. College, President Nancy Dye said, "Of all the groups working at the College, the faculty is the most underpaid."

However, professor of history Gary Kornblith argued that there is already a disparity between the salary of the faculty and the A&PS. He warned against perpetuating this and ignoring the concerns of the A&PS. He said, "I think the working position of the faculty is perceived as a lot of unfairness."

Evans also briefly mentioned the financial clouds hovering over the Co-Op Bookstore, which lost 450 thousand dollars last year. Later, during a question and answer period, Al Mackay, professor of philosophy, reminded Evans of the subject, and said, "I thought I detected an invitation to talk about the Co-Op Bookstore."

Evans explained that an outside firm was brought in to help the Co-Op sort through its financial mess. As a result, the College agreed not to open a competing bookstore. He said, "the whole industry has been changing and the Co-Op has had to deal with that as well," referring to warehouse bookstores and online businesses.

Whatever the source of its troubles, Evans said that a few weeks ago a plan was put forth saying that by April the Co-Op will be completely out of cash and unable to buy books for next fall. "The College is going to have to come to some conclusion to determine if we can continue to have confidence in the Co-Op," he said. If not, he added, "The Co-Op has to engineer a graceful exit from the bookstore business."

After Evans' presentation, the CF voted to postpone a presentation by a four-member panel entitled "How to get the most from an Oberlin student." After the panel, organized by Dean of the College Clay-ton Koppes, gave its presentation, the entire CF was supposed to have held a discussion on it. However, it was decided that their was neither enough time for a full discussion, nor enough faculty members present for it to have any value, and it was postponed until the next meeting.