The NIU Executive Cabinet has announced that students working in university jobs will not receive raises this spring. The reasons given are the reduction in availability of general revenue funds from which to pay students and the fact that faculty and staff salaries have been frozen for the academic year.

This year’s budget cuts have resulted in a shortage of general revenue funds from which to give raises to the faculty and staff—and students who work for general revenue-supported departments. It’s true NIU can’t pay out what it doesn’t have. That’s a simple fact of economics.

owever, not all students working for campus employers are paid from general revenue funds. University Food Services pays its employees from self-generated revenues, not state dollars. Bond revenue facilities are budgeted to allow for raises. And The Northern Star pays its employees from advertising revenues.

Not that the Star would have given raises this spring anyway—every salaried employee at the paper recently took a pay cut—it’s the principle that matters.

It’s clear administrators tried to make a decision that would be fair to everyone. Their decision was to say if some people can’t get raises, no one can—regardless of the availability of funds. Those employees paid from general revenue can’t get raises because there’s no money to pay for them. No one else can get raises because it wouldn’t be “fair” or “consistent.”

Students empathize with the salary freeze faced by faculty and staff. The Day of Action and other activities organized by student leaders, geared at encouraging the legislature to reconsider a tax increase, have not addressed only the limited issue of the tuition increase. They also have noted the need for adequate funding for faculty salaries.

Yes, the faculty need raises. Everyone knows that. But the fact is, they aren’t getting raises because the money simply isn’t there. That isn’t true for those students and staff who are paid out of funds generated by the operations of their employers.

When the spring semester arrives, student-workers will be faced not only with cost-of-living increases and a $150 out-of-pocket loss due to the tuition increase, but frozen salaries.

The Executive Cabinet’s decision will produce consistency—and maybe even fairness. But, in the words of Student Association President Jim Fischer, “It’s lousy.”