There is not much I can say about the budget cuts without sounding like a broken record, nor can I say anything that could make any of this better.

But I can tell a little story.

Once upon a time, I worked in a crowded kitchen with a Native American named Jimmy. When things were too hectic, he would yell, “There are too many chiefs in the kitchen and not enough Indians!”

That is exactly what has happened at the University. We are overrun with chiefs.

For months, the opinion section has published columns citing a major flaw in the American business world. Corrupt executives taking more than their share of the pie while the rest of the country suffers are that flaw.

Now picture UVM as a country. Our corrupt executives are misleading mentors in the guise of administrators “looking out for our best interests.”

When was the last time any vice president came and taught you something in class?

Sure, they handle “tough, financial decisions” and “guide the University” – which they’ve done so remarkably well – but when was the last time one of them did something for you?

They say they want to do what is best for the University, and Fogel is quoted, in a transcribed interview available on The Cynic Web site, saying that the layoffs were done in order to “preserve academic quality, including the quality of the student experience.”

Well, Fogel, and the rest of you chiefs who like to hide in the face of protest, how do your shoes taste?

If you really want to preserve our academic experience, take a pay cut and keep the teachers and organizations that make our experience worthwhile.

And if you don’t want a pay cut, as the amazing artwork on the Davis Center reads, leave.

If you do not want to be here. Leave.

If you are here because you want to make a buck. Leave.

We don’t want you here.

We want administrators who want to be here because they love this University as much as we do. If you really do love this school, take a 25 percent pay cut. Fogel makes more than $300,000 a year.

Twenty percent of that is $60,000. And that’s just one person. How many jobs could have been saved if all the members of the administration took just a 10 percent pay cut?

This is our University. Our University for learning and teaching. Not investing, divesting, laying off, cutting sports or anything else.

This place is not a business, it is an institution of learning, and it’s time we took it back for that purpose.