At an open forum for the entire campus community, faculty, staff and students had a chance to take part in a Q and A session with Chancellor Joe Gow. The session, composed mostly of academic staff and department personnel, raised questions regarding possible higher pay, the UW System as a whole, admissions and upcoming and current building projects taking place on campus.

During the discussion involving higher pay for academic staff and faculty, Gow noted, “We think compensation is our biggest challenge, and we want to pay people more. [The University] wants to be more competitive with pay, but in the political environment, how can we get that done?”

To help alleviate stress on university employees’ concern for higher pay, including professors and employees in offices such as Financial Aid, “a pool of money has been identified, a total 2% of our budget that we can allocate. We are looking at every person at the University on an individual base, and we will have a merit component for faculty, which the System added in. Of course, this is highly political, and we discussed this all with the president of the UW system, Ray Cross.”

In addition to Gow addressing higher pay, Bob Hetzel, UW-L’s Vice President of Administration and Finance, spoke about the original plan for raising wages.

“All of our plans, the Budget Council and Joint Planning and Budget, took a budget overcut to the tune of 1.5 million plus dollars so that every employee could get at least 1%. That was our goal. That would have been across the board, because all of our employees are all underpaid. [University staff] all work extremely hard, and we don’t compensate enough,” said Hetzel.

In addition to the original 1% pay increase, the university wanted to use the $750,000 restored funds for an additional 1% to be used for university staff.

“At this point, we were called into a meeting with President Cross and he said ‘We understand the problems with compensation but the system cannot enact something that reflects a pay plan,’ meaning everybody gets something,” he stated.

Further questions were brought up concerning the admissions rate for UW-L. The most recent incoming class had a total of 2,054 students, an increase from the previous year. The international student rate, however, dropped significantly, but the Admissions Office said they are trying to “get those numbers back to where they were.”

In the closing minutes of the Q and A session, Hetzel also discussed the numerous amount of building projects taking place on campus currently or in the very near future. The new Student Center, being built directly beside Wimberly Hall, has an estimated holiday opening in Dec. 2016, officially opening for the campus in Jan. 2017. In the upcoming years, a remodel for the Annette Theatre is planned in the Center for the Arts, giving a more modern, updated feel.