President David Skorton announced Friday that he and the Board of Trustees had secured the final two prongs of the University’s approach to financial recovery. There is little for us to criticize about this plan of attack, but there is much left to question as some more critical issues were swept under the rug.

Sure, Cornell took the steps that it needed to take in the current economic state. By selling $500 million in taxable bonds, an increased cash flow will allow for the University to maintain a proper operating budget. Additionally, the plan to cut endowment spending looks to offset the projected loss in endowment earnings. But with a $200 million budget shortfall, we are skeptical if this agenda is really as all encompassing as it is made out to be.

The “holistic” and “robust” plan leaves us pondering whether the economic reconstruction of the University is going to be as transparent as Skorton says it will.

For all that the University has announced to date in response to the economic crisis — a construction pause, more aggressive financial aid initiatives and voluntary staff retirement incentives — Cornell has tiptoed around the issue of faculty retirement, which was something we had been certain would be addressed in the final steps of the fiscal plan.

The tenure system was instituted as a means of protecting the academic freedom of professors by ensuring them full employment security. In years to come, we will see more and more tenured professors hanging on to their jobs a bit longer with a tight grasp on their employment benefits and salaries, especially as their retirement portfolios whittle away. With budgets being slashed across the colleges, we cannot fathom how the University will manage to keep tenured faculty on board while aggressively recruiting the next generation of minds to lay the groundwork for the future of academia.

Aside from faculty retention, however, the issue of the long-term success of Cornell’s investment portfolio is something that has been shrouded in secrecy since initial reports of a shrinking endowment. Granted, the president has assured that the investment office is working around the clock to restructure the University’s endowment in the harsh economic climate. But when asked on Friday how the portfolio would be taking shape, both Skorton and Peter Meinig ’61, chair of the Board of Trustees, refused to comment and said only that the portfolio was “well-positioned.”

With the Dow nearing 6,000, we question whether the Board’s work in the past few days really will serve as the all-inclusive plan that they proposed it would be. While necessary steps were taken to address the pressing issues of how Cornell will continue to operate, we feel that the obligatory level of transparency that has been called for has yet not been reached.