When you ask most college students on who the most influential person in their life is most will tell you parents, family or friends. This is not the case for me. Ceri Danes has been this for me. Danes is a University of North Dakota instructor in the communications department. With the budget cuts, she is one of the many in danger of losing her job. I don’t know if I would be where I am today without her. Walking into Danes’ office, she always has a smile on her face and will do everything she can to help you succeed. She is everything I hope to be in my future. Not only on a professional level but also on a personal one as well. She is the most substantial person I have met on this campus. Ceri Danes is one of the only reasons, I stayed on campus this year.

I have had many professors and instructors in my six years of college, four of which have been right here in Grand Forks. Danes has been my mentor for the last two years. She has no clue how much she does for the communications department and her students. When I am having a rough day, and don’t think I am cut out for this line of work, she is the one that helps me pick my head up. You can always count of having a good laugh in her classes. She brings in all types of people into them to present, most recently, Andre Washington from the International Center to talk about one of the many programs that they offer.

The voluminous darkness that has been looming across campus has been the fate of many of the academic and athletic programs. President Kennedy announced that the university needed to cut somewhere between 5 and 10% of their operating expenses. Expendable. That is what UND has proved time and time again that people are expendable. That is if you are anyone that is not an administer. Three million dollars has to come from somewhere in the arts and sciences budget. I can tell you where it is not coming from and that is from the salaries of those that have little to no student interaction. These people sit in their nice offices, with their secretaries doing nothing. While programs and instructors, like Ceri Danes, are being sent packing.

Not only are academic programs being cuts but so are athletics. Most recently the Women’s Hockey and the swimming and diving teams. Athletics needed to cut a reported $1.3 million. Losing these three teams has doubled what was asked for. A monstrous three million dollars was cut on Wednesday; leaving severed hearts in the depths of the pools and tears freezing to the sheet of ice that the hockey team was conducting practice when the news was leaked via social media. Since then the Women’s hockey team has received tons of support via social media and letters to President Kennedy.

The blame can be shared by the university as well as the North Dakota state legislators for allowing the University to purge money like it has been for years. The students are the ones who are losing out on what this terrific state has to offer. When programs are being cut, UND is being taken off prospective students lists. Why would you come to a college that is unstable? Besides college what does North Dakota else does it have to offer to bring young people here? The state thinks it is suffering now, just wait till it can’t get people to come to spend money and raise families.

How can a university look at its student body and tell us dreams can come true?