By Matt Kiernan / News Editor

An open forum was held to last Tuesday to discuss how the financial plans for the fall 2009 semester will affect students and faculty, and also to answering questions people may have had.

“We don’t know how much we will have to cut from the university budget,” said Miller to a group of faculty and members of the community gathered in the Connecticut Room in Memorial Hall.

“What we have to do is plan for a whole range of possibilities,” said Miller. He said that the CCSU administration doesn’t know what the tuition will be for next year and that salary increase discussions for faculty are being conducted throughout the year.

Miller said that the priority of the school is to protect classes but noted that the usual campus happenings won’t be running as well with less money. Students who would have normally been accepted during less harsh economic times are now going to be put on a waiting list for acceptance because there’s not enough money being given to the school. 

“We’ve had 700 more applications than we’ve had last year,” said Miller. He said that there have been 500 more acceptances this year than there were for the 2007-08 year and that the enrollment management committee will be conducting a meeting to see which students are accepted.

Provost Carl Lovitt said the new advising center that is due to be running during the fall 2009 semester will organize students by their level of college sompletion.

The advising center will have an initial intake facility, career-based center and center for general education. The new center, which is meant to handle freshmen advising will help transfer student from preliminary advising to advisors within departments.

The administration will be working with the current advising center to see where the responsibilities will be distributed to get the center working. Lovitt said that the administration is going to help build relationships between people working at the school. The position of the head director for the new advising center is yet to be filled.

Miller said that the school isn’t ready to keep searching for faculty positions at a rapid rate due to time and money issues.

“Who knows how long we’ll have to go down this path,” said Miller.

He said that he hopes to see the university out of the budget cycle in two years but that the school will have to remain with the current restraints.

“I think the average person on campus will continue on without seeing major differences.”