Layoffs are happening across the university, and people have the right to feel angry about that.

Professors and office secretaries generally are not to blame for enrollment being down so significantly that Eastern cannot pay its bills.

These people are actually the ones doing the most significant recruiting a majority of the time by promoting their departments to prospective students.

According to a story in Tuesday’s edition of The Daily Eastern News, one particular area on campus that has been affected by layoffs is the women’s resource center.

Because of the recent elimination of 118 civil service and administrative and professional employees, a total of 67 people were laid off.

Joe McLean, the office secretary of the women’s resource center, had his position eliminated and will use bumping rights to move to a new position while the center itself will have to change locations.

These decisions have to be based on where money can be saved without necessarily taking into account how individual people fared at their jobs or the meaningful connections they made while they were there.

It is understandable that declining state appropriations play a huge role in Eastern’s current budget crisis, and as much as students and administrators lobby Springfield, they still do not have much control over that.

However, neither low enrollment nor shrinking state funding should come across as anything new.

As such, President David Glassman’s announcement this summer that layoffs would be implemented to prevent a deficit should not have been much of a surprise.

Former President Bill Perry said in his last legislative testimony that an estimated 250 people would have to be laid off to offset a potential funding decrease of $13.85 million.

Just because people could have seen this coming, though, does not mean they should not have been afforded a fair warning.

For instance, the 26 annually contracted faculty who were let go over the summer all assumed they would be working at Eastern months ago when they received their contracts.

A heads-up could have considerably helped those faculty members find other employment by the fall, and Glassman and the administration had to have known they would need to make such significant cuts.

While no one can change the past, it should still be noted that this messy situation has been years in the making, and Glassman himself should not be to blame for trying to fix it.

New budgets are created every year, and more cuts spread out over time might have alleviated some of the burden the university is facing now, even though people will (justifiably) get upset whenever that happens.

But again, the past is the past, and looking forward the Eastern community should hold the new president as well as the Board of Trustees accountable for their decisions. If the board members pass all items at their meeting without much debate, this should be a sign to start asking questions. Asking tough questions of Eastern’s leaders now is the only way to avoid setting the university up for the same or worse situation down the line.