Our View: Faculty deserve a pay raise

It’s not a news flash that the economy sucks-it’s something that the news talks about on (at least) a weekly basis.

What may be surprising to Simpson students is how much the school is struggling. The school is under a hiring freeze due to low enrollment, low retention and thus, the school is under budget.

What is the result of this low budget? The faculty that works tirelessly to make sure that we succeed out of college no longer gets the 2 percent salary raise that they were told they would receive, regardless of the low budget in the May faculty meeting.

While 2 percent doesn’t begin to cover what the faculty members actually deserve as a budget increase, many faculty members were counting on that increase and now are told that they no longer will receive it.

For now, it doesn’t seem that there will be any pay cuts-but how can there be pay cuts? According to The Chronicle of Higher Education, for the 2009-2010 school year, Simpson was paying associate and assistant professors the lowest salary (by thousands of dollars) in comparison to the schools we compare ourselves to-Central, Coe, Cornell, Luther and Wartburg.

What’s frightening among all of this is that we have faculty on board at Simpson that has been recognized nationally and those particular faculty members are Simpson devout-they live and breath the Storm Red and Gold and they’re the reason Simpson students are here.

It’s no secret that they’re not here because of the money-they’re here because of us, the students. The least we could do is give them the raise that some need, and all of them deserve.

We can find other things to cut from. The faculty salary shouldn’t be the first place.