Faculty and administrators responded to questions about room and board costs, employee bonuses and the presidential search at the town hall meeting Nov. 10.
Jefferson Blackburn-Smith, vice president of enrollment management, responded to concerns about the 4 percent increase in room and board costs for the 2018-2019 school year.
"We invest significant amounts of money, several hundred thousand dollars a year, in modernizing the residence halls," said Blackburn-Smith. "We're doing maintenance in the residence halls so those are real costs that do need to be covered."
Room and board is not a feature all Otterbein students use. "Those costs are born by the students that are using those resources, not by everybody," said Blackburn-Smith.
President Kathy Krendl responded to a question about whether some employees would be laid off because of an increase in pay and benefits to other employees. The question was submitted anonymously.
In order to give employees benefits and bonuses, Otterbein has to pull out of their equity reserves but less was taken out of the reserves than was proposed to the board of trustees, according to Krendl.
"We have done our best to work within the constraints of our budget," said Krendl. "To say that the budget constraints are not any better I think is a misstatement. We still have budget constraints, there's no question about that."
"The reliance on the reserves is less than it was four years ago and in fact each year we have beat what we said we would rely on in terms of the invasion of the reserves."
John Tansey, faculty assembly chair and member of the presidential search committee, said, in response to a question about the progress of the search, that the presidential search committee has met several times. A position description and a call for applications has been sent to the public. He also said the committee has "representation from not just the faculty but the staff and students as well."
