Acorn

Media Credit: Meghan Van Dyk Chris Van Wyk presents the 2007 Budget Report in a meeting open to the Drew community on Tuesday Night [Click to enlarge]

Apparently, students aren�t the only ones with questions about where their money is going.

For the past six years, both Drew�s library and athletic department have been filing requests for funds to be allocated from The University Budget Committee. For six years, they�ve both been given the same thing: Barely enough.

When the 2007 Budget Report was released, two directors � Dr. Andrew Scrimgeour and Dr. Connie Zotos � felt the disappointment as they realized that few of their budget requests were met.

Since his arrival approximately six years ago, Dr. Scrimgeour has been petitioning for compact storage shelving, priced at $487,000, on level A in the library. A report from May 2000 said the library had run out of space. In order to maintain a reasonable working environment for students while providing them with the proper resources, more space must be available the report said.

Currently, the library fills three buildings as well as one storage room in facilities to house new collections and publications. In the storage room alone over 100 boxes of books and publications sit untouched and unavailable to the Drew community.

�Compact shelving would make access to these books possible,� Scrimgeour said.

The Cornell room in the library has recently had shelving units added to house circulating collections. Student work areas consequently have been crowded and reorganized to adjust to the additional shelving now in place. By adding compact shelving as a temporary solution, more books and circulations will be available to the academic community, according to Scrimgeour.

Similarly, Zotos has requested money to fund a full-time fencing coach. Head Coach Dayn DeRose now works as a part-time coach along with his assistant coach, Amy Reibman. The Drew fencing program has been extremely successful since DeRose joined the staff. He reinstituted varsity women�s fencing in 1997 and brought them to first place status in recent years.

Also, the men�s team had tremendous success by placing in the top three at Middle Atlantic Collegiate Fencing Association championships during the past five years.

During those same five years, his salary has been repeatedly turned down. The athletic department�s disappointment is shared.

�I feel so bad about that fencing team,� Vice President and Dean of the Theological School said at the opening of the budget committee meeting.

[The budget report] was very disappointing,� Zotos said.

Aside from the library�s compact shelving and full-time status for the fencing coach, both the library and the athletic department requested other funding that, like the others, was turned away.

The library also requested that $6,333 be distributed for improvement of public workstations. As some may notice, the library has recently added flat screen monitors to computers, however, the units themselves also need to be updated. A request for $9,000 would have made searching for scholarly articles and journals online more convenient through a program known as Link Resolver.

Scrimgeour�s library budget proposal describes the need for the new software. �Over the past few years, the library has dramatically increased its subscriptions to full text, online journals. We now have access to some 20,000 titles and continues to subscribe to about 2,000 print journals.�

The library also asked for $10,600 in student staffing in the special collections room and $24,242 for the inflation increase of book and microforms. All of these items were turned down by the 2007 Budget Committee.

The athletic department also placed a rather large comprehensive request of $166,000 which included the intent to expand Drew�s athletic recruiting to a national scope. Currently, the coaching staff of the varsity teams continues to struggle with recruiting. As the athletic world becomes more competitive, Drew�s inability to reach out to students in distant regions has placed the coaches and teams in a very tight situation.

By recruiting from different regions like the Midwest and West Coast, Dr. Zotos says that it will �contribute to the diversity of the school,� as well as the athletic teams.

Zotos expanded further, pointing out that regional diversity can prove just as important as diversity in race, gender and sexual orientation. She then described the difference between a student from Mass. and a student from Neb. is that unlike those from Mass., a student from Neb. has had less access to a metropolitan area. Most of Drew students reside in towns and cities between Boston and Washington D.C.

Midwesterners and West Coast residents are more susceptible to �the wow factor,� that is Drew�s key selling point its direct access to New York City, Zotos said.

Also on the athletic chopping block was funding for assistant coaches, professional development and an awards banquet.

The 2007 budget did include funds of $59,000 to keep current subscriptions to journals available for the library and $3,000 for game expenses for the athletic department.

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