Legislators in the StateHouse are wrestling with how to close the projected budget shortfalls.

If there are budget cuts to higher education, for example, would Kansas State University survive the hit?

Richard Myers, KSU President, said that during a Higher Education Budget Committee hearing he was asked ‘how would the university handle a 6% budget cut’ that would amount to nearly $11 million dollars.

“You have very few leverages you can pull, we have a lot of fixed costs – utilities, people, compensation salaries; so we could take out some of the areas that are more discretionary and most all of those are around how we take care of students in terms of tutoring, mentoring and all those types of programs,” said Myers. “That’d be devastating to the students…I don’t know what we would do.”

Officials at the University are struggling with decreased revenue due to lower than expected enrollment for this school year.

“That’s around four and half to five million dollars, revenue we were expecting and we didn’t get because enrollment was down and we haven’t fully accommodated that so if you add that $5 million to $11 million now we’re at $16 million cut this year,” said Myers.

No final action has been taken on proposed budget cuts to higher education at this time.

The Legislature is grappling with a nearly $320 million budget shortfall in the State.

The Junction City Area Chamber of Commerce February Business After Hours will be on February 16, 2017.

The monthly event will be held at the C.L. Hoover Opera House and is hosted by Symphony in the Flint Hills 2017.

The event will be from 5:00 pm to 7:00 pm with a special screening of the documentary Prairie Suite: Symphony in the Flint Hills at 5:45 pm.

RSVP by Wednesday, February 8th by calling 620-273-8955 or emailing kelly@symphonyintheflinthills.org.

The 12th Annual Symphony in the Flint Hills concert will be held in Geary County on June 10, 2017.

The Junction City Area Chamber of Commerce will host the first of three Legislative Coffees this Saturday, February 4th.

Start time is 9:00 am at the C.L. Hoover Opera House in the Montgomery Rehearsal Hall room in Junction City.

State legislators will provide updates on activities in Topeka and the public can pose questions on legislative issues. Some of the legislators invited to attend include Senators Jeff Longbine and Tom Hawk, and Representatives Lonnie Clark and Dave Baker.

This is the first of three coffees – the next will be March 4th and the final one on Sunday, April 1st.

This is free and open to the public.

Manhattan, KS, February 1, 2017 – Farzaneh Ziaee, Physics Graduate Student, is currently in Tehran, Iran, working on an experiment related to her studies at Kansas State University.

She is now reportedly stranded.

Ziaee’s visa was approved before President Trump’s Executive Order that prohibits citizens of seven countries from entering the U.S. for at least 90 days. Iran is one of the affected countries.

“Renewing my visa to come back to the U.S. underwent an extreme administrative processing, and unfortunately it was approved a few days before the executive order signature,” Ziaee wrote in an email to the Collegian. “Because of this, the issuance my visa, which was approved, already is suspended.”

Ziaee said the visa application took five months to gain approval.

The 90 day waiting period for re-entry into the country has reportedly affected Ziaee’s education and research.

“Waiting for at least three more months for a graduate student doing her research could have detrimental consequences,” Ziaee wrote. “Moreover, I had to finish my core courses. At the beginning of the semester, I had registered in two of them that, due to this problem, I dropped them as there was no anticipation of how long it would take to be able to attend the classes. In addition, my husband was supposed to work as a post doctoral scholar in the department of chemistry, which is suspended, too.”

Richard Myers, KSU President, said that there are approximately 67 students, staff and faculty at K-State affected by the travel restrictions.

“There will probably be a subset [of international students] that will say, ‘is this the kind of country that I want to study in’ if there are other alternatives out there,” said Myers.

Kansas State University reported decreased enrollment in the Fall and Spring semesters, amid budget cuts from the State.

Manhattan, KS – The K-State Black Student Union will host civil rights activist and educator Angela Davis for the annual Black History Month keynote address at 7:30 p.m. Feb. 1 in the K-State Student Union’s Grand Ballroom. Doors will open at 6:45 p.m. The topic of Davis’ lecture will be “Institutional Racism & Criminal Justice System.”

Davis is most known for her advocacy for gender equality, prison reform, and alliances across color lines. She is the author of nine books, including “Blues Legacies and Black Feminism” and “Are Prisons Obsolete?” Her most recent book, “Freedom Is a Constant Struggle: Ferguson, Palestine, and the Foundations of a Movement,” a collection of essays, was published in October 2015.

Davis is a founding member of Critical Resistance, a national organization dedicated to the dismantling of the prison industrial complex. Internationally, she is affiliated with Sisters Inside, an abolitionist organization based in Queensland, Australia that works in solidarity with women in prison.

She has lectured throughout the United States, in addition to Europe, Asia, South America and Australia. In recent years, Davis has been working diligently to change social issues associated with incarceration and the penal system, speaking mostly from her experience of incarceration in the 1970s after being placed on the FBI’s “Ten Most Wanted” list. From her own personal experiences, Davis encourages audiences to challenge ideas of incarceration and to think toward the possibility of a world without prisons.

Following the lecture, Black Student Union will be host a bevy of other events for the K-State community, including “The First, The Only, The Obamas,” a President’s Day tribute to the Obama family, and the annual “Soul Café” poetry slam, headlined by national award winning poet Crystal Valentine.

The theme for Black History Month is “Thirsty for Knowledge, Hungry for Change.”

Find more information and frequent updates on all of Black Student Union’s Black History Month activities on OrgSync and BSU’s social media outlets.