COLUMN: Watch your wallet

From Lisa Levenson's, "First Person," Fall '96 From Lisa Levenson's, "First Person," Fall '96Who's paying for additionalFrom Lisa Levenson's, "First Person," Fall '96Who's paying for additionalsecurity, property acquisitionFrom Lisa Levenson's, "First Person," Fall '96Who's paying for additionalsecurity, property acquisitionand other new initiatives? From Lisa Levenson's, "First Person," Fall '96Who's paying for additionalsecurity, property acquisitionand other new initiatives?To multi-billion-dollar corporations like the University, the largest private employer in America's fifth-largest city, numbers that scare the heck out of normal people start sounding like peanuts. Doubt it? Think back over the past six weeks. What about the purchase of the Sheraton at 36th and Chestnut streets for $15 million? Or the allocation of $5 million for minority permanence? Remember the fanfare surrounding the $3 million contract for biometric sensors in the dorms? The allocation of $3 million more to purchase and renovate a new, state-of-the-art headquarters for University police? As someone whose credit card bills outstrip her available resources, I have to ask: Who's paying for this stuff? A year ago, when the University was running a $2 million deficit but was ranked 15th among U.S. News and World Report's best college buys, Vice President for Government, Community and Public Affairs Carol Scheman said, "I don't believe there's going to be significant increases in public funding, and institutions are going to have to make strategic choices of where limited funds are going to go." So while federal and state support for basic research is threatening to dry up and students and parents are demanding that tuition hikes be tied to the inflation rate, just where is the money for these new initiatives coming from? We do need more minority students and faculty members, more police, more Escort vans and more space to house students who'd be displaced if the high rises were renovated. But when administrators scrapped the Revlon Center for the proposed Perelman Quad, which might be done by my 10th reunion, they did so because they expected major donor Ron Perelman to double his original $10 million pledge. When they knocked down historic but outmoded Smith Hall, they did so because the Defense Department was footing the bill for $24 million of the Institute for Advanced Science and Technology, and Board of Trustees Chairperson Roy Vagelos and his wife were kicking in another $10 million. I don't see donors lining up to have their names painted on the sides of the new Escort vans, etched into the new cops' badges or attached to the Public Safety command center. None have yet come forward with funds to renovate the Christian Science church at 4012 Walnut Street, which the University bought last year to ease the performing arts community's space crunch. It takes time to orchestrate major gifts -- the size, style and location of the donors' names must be decided upon, the exact financial terms of the transaction worked out. But with the $1-billion-plus Campaign for Penn, which ended in 1994, the University proved it can bring in big bucks. And the University's fund-raising ability is not the issue. The issue is that Executive Vice President John Fry is overseeing the implementation of a University-wide restructuring strategy he helped devise when he worked for the consulting firm of Coopers & Lybrand. University President Judith Rodin explained the process this way in a letter to faculty and staff, sent when restructuring began in January 1995: "The primary purpose of restructuring is to help us do a better job supporting and enhancing the primary missions of the University: teaching, research and service." Essentially, restructuring is supposed to realize $125 million in savings over five years, through staff attrition (retirement and vacancies via voluntary departures), outsourcing, the streamlining and automation of various processes and offices -- and, if necessary, layoffs. One more time: $25 million in savings, per year. Not in money that can be reallocated somewhere else -- as the $1 million in annual savings from turning Book Store operations over to Barnes & Noble may be -- but in savings that can be used to hold down, or at least stabilize, the costs of a Penn education. Noble goal, right? Well, how would you feel if, due to this restructuring project, you no longer had a job? Nothing personal, your boss said, but the University could no longer pay your salary. The next day, though, administrators had somehow found $3 million to purchase real estate or hire other new employees. Lousy, angry and bitter probably only begin to describe your emotions. And your feelings would be justified. See, a university -- especially a university like this one, with more than 200 years of tradition behind it and a reputation to uphold -- is kind of like a favorite son. The administrators who keep the place going are his ever-suffering parents. Mom and dad get angry at their son occasionally, especially when he asks for more toys or more books. Still, even if they can't exactly afford everything he asks for, they make every effort to do right by him because they're the older, wiser, responsible ones. The same analogy follows here on campus. We've clamored for better dorms, more cops and a more diverse faculty. All of these are good and necessary things. But when making "every effort" to satisfy these desires means administrators are mortgaging the future for the majority of students at Penn, is it really prudent? Can real estate acquisition and better safety technologies justify ever-increasing tuition, rent and meal plan rates? I'm a senior; to me, the answer's immaterial. If I were an underclassman, I'd be watching my wallet.