The newspaper today has a story on expected budget cuts in Minnesota higher education. After discussion a series of scenarios with our budget emperess, Diana Burlison, the article ominously intones, "In the meantime, the university has not implemented any account or spending freezes." That's not exactly true; there's already been a belt-tightening memo that disallows consulting contracts and non-contractual travel. Those of you tuning in from elsewhere should know the budget freeze last year occured on May 1 (fiscal year ends June 30); the contract moratorium was in early March, so we're about three months ahead of schedule here.

Still, I think we need to start a pool, following the ATS Dead Pool idea in the previous post. So give us the effective date you think the budget freeze will come. We'll accept "never" to mean no freeze will happen. We'll devise some prize for the winner, perhaps a gift certificate to Office Max to buy the pens and paper the freeze won't let you have anymore. Put your entries in the comment box or email them to the address shown on the left column. (Sorry, but linking that usually leads to spam, and I'm moderating the Scholars' email box, ish!)

I'll go first: February 10th.