LSU Not Bluffing On Funding Cuts, Chancellor Says
by JORDAN BLUM - Advocate (excerpt)

Four Pulitzer Prizes and the publishing of the famed “A Confederacy of Dunces” may not be enough to keep the LSU Press from being shuttered because of budget cuts.

In order to protect its “academic core,” LSU leaders are threatening to cut or even close many of its ancillary units unless the Legislature significantly reduces proposed budget cuts of up to 15 percent of the state’s appropriations to colleges. Among the units on the proverbial chopping block are the LSU Press, the Southern Review literary journal, the LSU Museum of Art, Rural Life Museum, Hilltop Arboretum, Louisiana Library Network and the Center for Advanced Microstructures and Devices. So is LSU bluffing with fear tactics to convince the Legislature to reduce budget cuts or are these threats legitimate?

LSU mass communication professor Bob Mann, who has published with the LSU Press, is among those attempting to spread the word about the worth of the press. Mann calls it “horribly misguided” that the LSU Press is being threatened. The press, which publishes about 80 books a year, brings more “international acclaim” to LSU than anything else besides sports, he said. LSU’s preliminary budget-cutting plan from April recommends cutting $9.2 million from research units such as CAMD and the LSU Center for Computation and Technology. Another $4.1 million could be cut from entities like the press and museums. “Because of the nature of some of these entities and their fixed cost of operation, it is very possible they cannot generate the revenue needed and will close,” the plan states. They could be “closed or materially downsized.”