SEMO staff, students wait for cutback plan

Cut middle management. Cut faculty. Cut athletics. Cut the swimming pool.

Collect faculty parking fees. Stop covering so much health insurance. Raise tuition -- again.

The ideas have been flying fast and furious at Southeast Missouri State University. They came out at a series of four meetings aimed at getting input from staff and students about how the university can cut $500,000 from the current budget after the state had to withhold a sizable chunk of funding.

Those meetings were a good idea, and apparently those invited thought so as well. They turned out in droves. About 200 attended the last one, held Sept. 13, and that's in a community of about 36,000 people where public forums routinely attract fewer than 20.

The question now is how many of those ideas will be reflected in a plan Dr. Ken Dobbins, university president, is scheduled to release Wednesday.

Only then will those who took the time to attend and were brave and committed enough to speak know whether they were heard.