LOOKING IN ON: HIGHER EDUCATION

By Charlotte Hsu (contact)

Tuesday, Nov. 27, 2007 | 7:12 a.m.

Though higher education Chancellor Jim Rogers has refused to work with the governor on proposed budget cuts, his bosses on the Board of Regents, which governs higher education in Nevada, will debate strategies for dealing with potential reductions at their meeting this week.

Last week Gibbons told state agencies to prepare to slash their budgets by 8 percent. The governor previously had asked leaders to plan for a 5 percent cut.

Saying schools can't just "tell every fourth student, 'Go home,' " Rogers compared Gibbons' request to an amputation of the higher education system.

"What you're going to do is like removing one leg," Rogers said.

In a letter to the governor the day before Thanksgiving, Rogers wrote, "It would be extremely helpful for us to understand where, in this free fall, you would consider calling a special session of the Legislature to utilize (reserves) or consider new and additional sources of revenue before making additional cuts in the system budget that literally eviscerate our institutions."

By the week of Thanksgiving, the hordes of sound bite-hungry reporters who crowded UNLV to cover the Nov. 15 Democratic debate were gone.

But UNLV journalism students, right at home, continued to muse about their debate experiences in a blog devoted to the event.

The students, who are enrolled in a digital storytelling class, contributed writing, videos, photos and audio content to the blog before, during and after the debate.

And unlike other media outlets, which focused largely on the debate, the blog's coverage - intimate and local - showed how the debate affected UNLV.

"It is baffling to see what the UNLV students and staff have to put up with every time a big event comes to the Thomas & Mack or Cox (Pavilion)," wrote contributor Sonja Corliss in a posting about how the debate exacerbated campus parking problems.

Contributor Rob Ponte wrote that "tight security and empty seats characterized" a campus debate-watch party for students and others who applied for but didn't get a seat at the debate.

"The (watch party) was invite-only ... Despite the empty chairs, UNLV students who walked up were not granted entry," Ponte wrote.

He also blogged about the watch party's red, white and blue food (blue potatoes, white cauliflower, red bell peppers, apples adorned with American flags).

And contributor Kristen Ruby, blogging the week after the debate, shared her thoughts about the attitudes of other journalists she met.

"I really appreciated that the other reporters made me feel like I had just as much a right to be there as they did," Ruby wrote. "I felt like we were on an equal playing field and I am very (grateful) for their friendly and accepting attitudes."

About two weeks before board meetings, higher education regents receive hundreds of pages of documents such as budgets and reports that pertain to issues on which they will vote.

The documents are meant to help regents better understand how their decisions will affect students, taxpayers and other stakeholders.

But sometimes campus officials wait until the day of a meeting to provide handouts containing important information.

"That doesn't give us any time to read the materials," Regent Steve Sisolak said.

"There should be nothing coming late," Regent Mark Alden said. "I want to be prepared for the meeting."

To Alden's and Sisolak's pleasure, the regents this week will consider banning same-day handouts at meetings.

To show how irritating these last-minute documents can be, here is an agenda item introducing the proposed prohibition:

"Concerns have been expressed by the regents concerning reference materials that are provided as handouts at board and committee meetings," the item reads. "Although the board recognizes that time is invested in preparing some handouts, they are disruptive to the meeting process, they tax the resources of the system and the material becomes part of the record giving rise to an erroneous assumption (that) the board has had an opportunity to consider the information in the materials."