In the face of state budget cuts, no one is quite certain how Nicholls will specifically be affected or what the plan of action is.

Last week, University President Bruce Murphy met with students and faculty in the student union to discuss budget cuts.

Governor Bobby Jindal has released his budget proposal, and now the legislators must come up with a way to make up for the $608 million gap in the budget.

Some students, like Jenna Graham an elementary education senior from Thibodaux, felt that while the meeting was necessary, Murphy may have glossed over the major issue.

“I thought they would be saying how the budget cuts were going to specifically affect students, and that didn’t happen,” Graham said. “It was a big show.”

Graham said after Murphy’s speech, she was left wondering, “Okay, what if the big miracle doesn’t happen and they do cut higher education?”

In an interview later that afternoon, Murphy cleared up some of the confusion.

Murphy said that while the University Council is talking about it and thinking about it, because they do not know the extent of the proposed budget cuts, they do not know what will happen.

Nothing will be certain until the legislators come up with a solution to the problem, which is why Murphy is urging everyone to call their representatives.

Murphy said, “If they say it’s a 100 percent cut, that’s about 16 million dollars less. We’d probably have to, even though I don’t want to do it, raise tuition or fees. I don’t think that’s the way to go because we’d have fewer students. So we would probably cut programs and services.”

“Whatever the cut is, there would be fewer services for students, but I don’t know what those things would be,” Murphy said.

Murphy said that when you cut every year for six years, “You have the basic bare bones. Now we’re talking about amputating. Programs would have to be impacted, but I can’t tell you what that would be because I don’t know what the result is.”

According to Murphy, the danger with identifying programs to cut is that it sends the message to the legislature that the University is okay with cutting programs. “Believe it or not, we have students in every one of our programs, and it’s very important to them,” Murphy said, “They’re planning on contributing to society in that field.”

Eugene Dial, vice president for student affairs said, “I think we’re at a time where it’s a crucial decision point for our state. Over the last seven years, higher education hasn’t been given a priority by the administration or the legislature. I think we’re at a tipping point. Either our state’s going to decide that public education is important to the public, or it’s not.”

“We’re very concerned about the cost of tuition.” Dial said. “We don’t want to go up on tuition or fees any more than absolutely necessary. Certainly we don’t want to go up just for the purpose of replacing state money that’s withdrawn from the state budget. Then the students have no improvement effect… Nobody likes to pay more and not get anything different.”

Nicholls does offer a number of private merit and need-based scholarships to students.

“We offer a significant number of scholarships to highly qualified students,” Dial said. “We want to keep our best and brightest in the region. I would probably say 90 percent of our scholarship recipients are directly from this region, and we want those outstanding students here at Nicholls.”

“I think the quality experience we offer and the number of our graduates who are hired into good positions is a strong signal that Nicholls has a quality program,” Dial said.

There are varying opinions among students as to whether Nicholls is “affordable.”

Secondary education freshman Will Tanner said that he does consider Nicholls affordable. He said that he receives the lowest level of TOPS and his parents help pay for school.

C.J. Stall, a management freshman from Harvey said he only considers Nicholls affordable with TOPS, but his parents also help pay for school.

Some students are not as fortunate.

Patience Pepper, a graphic design freshman from Thibodaux who does not have a TOPS scholarship, said she would have to drop out of school if tuition increased.

“I have multiple student loans, and I can barely afford supplies as it is,” Pepper said.

“We’ve reached the point where students who depend on financial assistance have difficulty in their freshmen year meeting the financial requirements,” Dial said. “I think we’ve about tapped out what people can afford.”