Students, faculty and community members are taking aim at the $950,000 the university spent to renovate the president’s house, as well as questions about an $840,000 no-bid contract it signed with a start-up firm to coach freshmen to graduation. Both come at a time when the university is making $40 million in cuts, including eliminating 213 positions.

 Faculty Senate President Bill Rich has said some of the current fiscal  problems were years in the making. 

“There were some other decisions to build that resulted in some excess capacity that probably occurred because people had some unrealistic hopes about what would happen with enrollment in the face of declining demographics, that is fewer and fewer students graduating from high school.” 

But he also questions some of the priorities of the current administration: Including the continuation of the football program that costs the university an estimated $8 million a year.