The budget crisis was fresh on the minds of NIU president John Peters and Faculty Senate President Sue Willis as they addressed the University Council on Wednesday afternoon.

Before Peters relayed the Board of Trustees plans to handle the budget to the council, which was discussed at their meeting earlier on Wednesday, he told them they should spread the word of how passionately the BOT was working in the midst of this crisis.

“I’ve worked with a lot of trustees,” Peters said, “and I’ve never worked with a group of people like this.”

Up until this point, Peters said he has tried his best not to resort to layoffs, but he said he can’t guarantee that anymore with the legislation asking for an 8 percent reserve for fiscal year 2003. He asked the council for understanding and support in the midst of hard decisions that will be made.

Kathy Buettner, executive director of state and federal relations, and Eddie Williams, executive vice president and chief of operations for Finance and Facilities, were in Springfield working on the budget Wednesday. They met with the Illinois Board of Higher Education and representatives of the Bureau of Budget, along with other representatives from other state universities to discuss the fiscal year ’03 budget as well as beginning to discuss the fiscal year ’04 budget. Peters made it clear that cancelling summer school would be a last- case scenario and that the spring semester will be finished.

Patricia Henry stressed the importance of lobbying for a faculty voice in her IBHE report in the face of cutting scholarships and MAP grants for fifth-year seniors.

Deborah Smith-Shank, chair of the Elections and Legislative Oversight Committee, announced the newly elected university council members, which are as follows: College of Business — Sally Ann Webber; College of Education — Richard Orem, Amy Rose; College of Health and Human Sciences — Ken Burns; College of Liberal Arts and Sciences — Colin Booth, David Gorman, Patricia Henry, Angela Powers, Paul Stoddard and Fahui Wang; and College of Visual and Performing Arts — Larry Gregory.

Peters also touched on the war with Iraq and terror.

He guaranteed that free speech will be protected, but any property damage that may occur would not be tolerated. He said that if protests are kept to the capacity of the campus, then it would be harder to guarantee their protection.

In other business, the council voted to adopt the Committee on Advanced Professional Certification in Education for consideration.

Also, Student Association President Kevin Miller proposed a consideration to post class syllabi on the Student Association Web site. The council unanimously voted to refer the proposal to the academic policy committee.