Petition against U of S program cuts growing in signatures

About 150 University of Saskatchewan students and faculty have signed a petition criticizing the school's new financial plan.

The letter says the school should call its new plan to help recover $20 million from its projected $44.4 million deficit a failure.

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The TransformUS strategy is one of seven initiatives that would help makeup for the overspending by 2016.

But the petition calls for more consultation before the university looks for areas to cut.

The university's president, Ilene Busch-Vishniac, says the school had two options.

"We could either be strategic and try to evaluate which programs it made sense to consider for reductions and funding and which to add funding to, or we were going to have to implement an across the board cut," she says.

Busch-Vishniac also call portions of the petition misleading.

"It really is very simple," she says. "If your personnel costsare three fourths of your budget and then goes up by four-and-a-half per cent per year, and the government gives you two per cent a year, then there is a problem."

The letter has been circulating online and gathering more signatures.