photo by: Dylan Lysen

Members of Graduate Teaching Assistants Coalition, a union made up of GTAs at the University of Kansas, protest during a budget meeting led by interim provost Carl Lejuez on Tuesday, Feb. 26, 2019.

In a meeting meant to focus on plans to adopt a new budgeting process at the University of Kansas amid a $20 million budget cut, interim provost Carl Lejuez ended up dealing with a protest and fielding questions about the university’s administrative salaries.

Lejuez said during a Dec. 5 town hall meeting on the budget that the university would eliminate about 55 faculty positions and 100 staff positions in the next two school years as part of the budget cut. He said at the time that the university planned to make up for those faculty losses through the use of nonfaculty lecturers.

When Lejuez went over the same plan during a meeting on Tuesday at Watson Library, members of a union representing graduate teaching assistants at the university — who will likely be among the nonfaculty lecturers filling those roles — interrupted him to protest. More than 15 members of the group known as Graduate Teaching Assistants Coalition demanded wage increases for GTAs and cuts to administrative salaries.

The union members held signs with logos of the American Federation of Teachers, a national teachers union of which the GTAC is a chapter, and chanted “Fair pay today for faculty and GTA” and “Hey hey, ho ho, overpaid admins have to go.”

Lejuez said he would answer questions from the group after his presentation, but the group left the meeting abruptly after the protest. He proceeded to discuss the previously announced faculty and staff reductions and a plan to move to a new budgeting system in July 2020.

photo by: Dylan Lysen

University of Kansas interim provost Carl Lejuez speaks during a meeting about the university’s budget at Watson Library on Tuesday, Feb. 26, 2019.

After the presentation, Lejuez told the audience he understood the group’s frustrations, but he said the current budget situation did not provide an opportunity to address their demands.

“I don’t have an answer on how we are going to fix those specific problems,” he said.

Audience members Katherine Pryor, KU director of theater, and Shawn Alexander, an African-American studies professor, followed up with questions about administrative salaries.

Lejuez said he understood why there were concerns about administrative salaries, but he said it was a small number of administrators who make a high salary.

“There’s really a few of us who need to take the brunt of that,” he said. He did not elaborate on who those administrators are or what their salaries are.

But Lejuez, who makes more than $400,000 per year, said cutting the salaries of the highest-paid administrators would not make much of a difference in the $20 million budget cut.

“Changing my salary, or changing one or two other salaries, is not going to have any impact on anything meaningful that our people are feeling,” he said. “If it’s symbolic, I understand that. But this is not something I’m willing to do.”

He also said the salaries for administrators needed to be competitive within the world of academia to make sure the university could attract the best candidates for important positions.

Satyagopal Mandal, a math professor, said the university should separate itself from that world of academia where administrative salaries continue to increase, which he called a “tumor.” He said the university should have a $250,000 cap on all salaries, including the chancellor and the provost.

“This is a national cancer,” he said. “The money is growing and we cannot afford it. We should separate ourselves from this tumor.”