tl20080918-01 "Now on TheTowerlight.com: View video of five Towson students working at a local volunteer firehouse... Sept. 18, 2008 Thursday www.thetowerlight.com FREE College life spent on call Hundred positions may go unfilled Univ. System,TU expect to avoid layoffs, furloughs Photos by Kristofer Marsh/The Towerlight Above, first-year graduate student Mark McKenna, left, and senior biology major Tony Basel hang out in a hallway of the Lutherville Volunteer Fire Company station. Below, senior history major Clint Cardinale waits in the firehouse for a call. In all, five Towson students live and volunteer at the LVFC while attending classes and answering emergency calls in the area. The Towerlight Published by Baltimore Student Media for the Towson University Community Tigers defeats UMBC, 2-1 Sports, page 24 Nick DiMarco Senior Editor While some students work part time serving food in restaurants or in retail, a handful work around the clock, sav-ing lives. They trade in dorm rooms for a 10-bed sleeping area with one bathroom to share in a building that hasn�t been renovated since 1953. Instead of a relaxing afternoon on the Beach, they study and wait for a siren to go off. Five Towson students spend the majority of their days as volunteer fire-fighters at the Lutherville Volunteer Fire Company, minutes away from the University. Tony Basel, Clint Cardinale, Mark McKenna, Ryan Ayers and Michael Cover are all Towson students who volunteer. A credit to the community In 2007, the LVFC responded to 2,039 emergencies, making it one of the busiest volunteer fire companies in Baltimore County, something Capt. Steve Weatherby said he attributes large-ly to the help of his Towson cadets. Last semester, they responded to the two-alarm fire that ravaged four apart-ment units in the Kenilworth at Charles apartment complex. The station averages five or six calls a day with each Towson cadet respond-ing to 60 to 70 calls a month, along with taking a full course load of classes. Five Towson students spend time off campus saving lives at local firehouse See FIRE, page 11 Kiel McLaughlin Editor in Chief More than one hundred faculty, staff and administrative positions may go unfilled if significant budget cuts hit Towson in the next few weeks. The extent of the cuts remains uncertain according to Jim Sheehan, vice president for administration and finance and chief finan-cial officer. However, he did say in an e-mail that Towson will �have to absorb six to seven percent of the total,� cut from the University System of Maryland�s budget. Joe Vivona, the vice chancellor for administration and finance and chief operating officer for the USM, said budget reductions for each campus would be fairly even across the board. The hiring freeze imposed by the USM last Thursday due to a slowed economy and antici-pated budget cut from the state brought all searches to fill vacant positions to a halt. The freeze is just one of several strategies the USM will employ to balance the budget. Vivona said leaving positions vacant along with other measures would reach the savings the state will request. �When you only have nine months and you find out about the reduction during the fiscal year�you still have some flexibility in how much you will spend,� he said. �They can include postponement of equipment purchas-es, the hiring freeze, among other things that can be postponed to make up the savings.� While Vivona said on some campuses lay-offs and furloughs may be a possibility, he and Sheehan are confident that these measures will not be necessary at Towson. Sheehan said the University anticipated and prepared for the possibility of a freeze or cut. �This budget reduction did not catch us by surprise. During the budget development pro-cess we anticipated the possibility and made some provisions for it,� Sheehan said. See CUTS, page 8 Zen West delivers top Tex-Mex Life, page 14 "
