With significant cuts coming to funding in the state’s public universities, every department will feel the pinch. Wayne State’s Athletics Department is one of the many that will see significant budget cuts for fiscal year 2012.

WSU President Allan Gilmour said Gov. Rick Snyder’s proposed state university budget cuts will affect the Detroit institution for the sum of $42 million or 21 percent.

Gilmour wrote in his blog last week that this will be “the largest single-year budget cut for this university since we began receiving state support.”

The administration has stated it will not make cuts evenly across the board, giving the Board of Governors that discretion.

The athletic department held a budget meeting March 30 in which the university was projecting cuts to the department’s budget.

WSU Athletic Director Rob Fournier said the administration has stated it will not make cuts evenly across the board, giving the BOG that discretion. He noted that they are currently planning next year’s budget and numbers should be out in mid-May.

Fournier said he is “very concerned” about these cuts and their effects on the department. With the athletics budget only totaling $4.8 million for fiscal year 2011 — less than 1 percent of the university’s $500 million budget — he knows it will have a large impact on his relatively small budget.

“I don’t have any fluff built into my budget,” Fournier said.

He said he has spent “right down to the dollar.” He also noted that he has been no funded positions open where he could decide not to fill them to alleviate the cuts.

“If you just look at numbers, people don’t have a good reference point,” Fournier said. “My reference point is that I see the people, so I know what the effect is.”

Fournier could not speculate on what will be cut but notes that team schedules and travel costs are already set for 2011-2012 and those cannot change. In terms of cuts, everything is on the table, a sport.

WSU eliminated the men’s hockey program after the 2008 season, but Fournier said he would hope that would be a last resort.

“When you cut a sport, it hurts not just current people but impacts alum,” he said, “and you’ve diminished the importance of your program a little bit.”