Answers appreciated

Last week, we here at The Chart promised to continue to look into the depreciation issue. There are still a number of budget questions, however we would like to thank the members of the University’s finance team and Dr. Mark Comstock, professor of accounting, for working to find us the answers we needed.

It took a while to decode ‘accountant-speak,’ and boil down a plethora of information to a few well-organized sentences, but it’s good to finally have something concrete the layman can understand.

Depreciation is complicated. We established that. The opening of a taxicab company is a real world example that people can relate to. For that we thank Comstock.

Depreciation is a very small piece of a very messy whole. The ‘budget crisis’ still begs all kinds of important questions. How did we get here to begin with? Why didn’t we see it coming? And, the most important of them all, how do we plan to fix it?

Even in the brief time since budget cuts began, we’ve seen how money can divide our campus. Students and faculty are taking sides (athletics vs. international) but in times of belt tightening everyone should have to answer for where their dollars go. Some departments have seen the red flags popping up and are prepared to defend the use of their budgets.

The business office has been raked over the coals these past few weeks, and they’re nowhere near the only ones who need to be held accountable.