On the second occasion in recent memory, our email inboxes have been met with a sobering statement from Chancellor Wrighton. Because of the current state of the economy, Wash. U.’s endowment has diminished significantly, and our University will need to make significant cuts in order to address a predicted $30 million shortfall in the operating budget beginning in fiscal year 2010.

This need for cuts places a burden on the University: The administration must make hard decisions at the margin. In an interview before his email was released, Wrighton attested to these problems, saying, “We’d like to stand up and say, ‘Here’s some fat over here, and let’s eliminate it, but I don’t think we have fat. If we did, we would have eliminated it before, because we’re always trying to shovel more money into financial aid, more money into our top priority initiatives, so we’re pretty tightly managed. But, if you’re operating with 5% less money than you thought you had, then you have to do something.”

In a staff editorial last April, we encouraged that cuts in the administration’s operating budget should prioritize internal well-being over external image. While most of the changes proposed in the Chancellor’s email — reducing energy consumption, delaying the renovation of Mallinckrodt and closing the math and biology libraries — are responsible, we are concerned about the changes to employees’ health care plans. The Chancellor wrote, “healthcare benefits have been altered to avoid University expenses of about $4.5 million.” We are leery of these alterations, worried that they will lead to faculty discontentment, and, ultimately, turnover.

Admittedly, the reduction in the operating budget puts the administration in a difficult situation. The Arts & Sciences strategic plan released in 2008 calls for innovation across areas–new hiring, new construction and many new resources for students. The cuts mean that these innovations may not take place, that new construction will be awkwardly stalled and new student resources will be limited.

The strategic plan was authored by a University seeking to vault itself in the U.S. News & World Report rankings, something that it had consistently done throughout the 1990s and most of the 2000s. In his email, Wrighton emphasized the need to remain competitive with peer institutions.

We encourage the University to adopt a different definition of “competition” for the undergraduate education it offers. We do not need to attract students of privilege with high SATs by completing new construction, but we do need to remain competitive in the things that matter: The strength of our faculty and the community for undergraduates. Community-building–one of the initiatives outlined in the ArtSci strategic plan–can occur whether or not there are new buildings for it to take place in, and students can continue to achieve at high levels regardless of whether it takes place in new classrooms or in old ones.

Thanks to efforts from the administration over the past two decades, the University now offers a world-class education. We enjoy many small and attractive luxuries at this school, but these are negligible in the face of the University’s academic strength. When the economy turns around, the University will be just as capable of attracting new students by re-implementing these small luxuries. The loss of an academic foundation, however, will be more difficult to endure.

Wash. U. has spent two decades and billions of dollars building a name and a reputation. Fortunately, the cuts in the operating budget come at a time when the University is nationally renowned for the quality of its education. We can discontinue advertising campaigns, stop funding expensive weekends for prospective students and cease mailing heavy brochures to high school students across America.

We stress, once again, that the University should make all efforts possible to preserve the strength of its faculty and community, even if these efforts get in the way of marketing its way up in the rankings. The faculty and community are in place, and—new buildings or not—the students will come.