Curtis McCray will serve as interim president of Wright State until president-elect Cheryl Schrader begins office in early July. Until then, McCray will deal with trimming and managing the budget. On Friday, March 24, he released a statement regarding his plan for the university.
“Surely, it is not lost on anyone that we have a very serious financial problem and that this problem must be resolved as we enter the next fiscal year,” McCray wrote in an e-mail to Wright State. “We must trim a very large deficit from the FY18 budget and leave that budget with a small reserve.”
McCray cites several reasons for the current budget emergency, including bad judgement, lassitude and bad luck.
“Of the many reasons leading to our deficit, I blame complexity, unmanaged complexity; the complexity that large universities have brought upon themselves and that growing, modern populations have demanded,” McCray writes. “In times of booming economies, general societal wealth, generous financial allocations, the problems brought on can be ignored. In effect, the management of the institution goes untested. In times of scarcity, the errors brought on by complexity are sorely evident and must be managed.”
In the meantime, faculty, staff and students wait for the full extent of the budget cuts to be revealed.
