The recent cuts at the University of Montana have often been depicted as a budget fight between the administration and faculty, but now faculty members say that cuts in some administrative positions are directly hurting their departments.

Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies Director Beth Hubble says she is planning on spending a lot more time working as an administrator next year.

"We have grown hugely, we have over 40 majors in our first year and then we got news in January... we've always had a .5 admin, actually only during the academic year, so its more like a .4, so 20 hours a week during the school year, but that was cut to just 10 hours a week in January," Hubble said.

The replacement for that administrative position will be doing similar work in two other departments, including the Philosophy Department where associate professor Soazig Le Bihan says the administrative cuts need to be focused on higher wage earners.

"I think that many people have been talking about growth in administration at all university nationally, you know, it's a national problem," Le Bihan said. "Faculty numbers have been cut and administrations have been growing, but I don't think that we should be cutting the little admin that has direct contact with the students. If we're going to cut something, lets cut some of those higher salaries."

Other departments, like the History department, plan on giving up their phone lines to make budget. For her part, Le Bihan says time that faculty members need to shift to administrative tasks will likely lead to less journal articles and name recognition for teachers and the University of Montana.

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