Ornithology Department Budget Slashed After University Discovers It Has an Ornithology Department

The University of Central Ohio has announced a 90 percent budget reduction for its Department of Ornithological Sciences after a routine facilities audit revealed that the department existed at all. 'I've been provost for eleven years and this is genuinely the first I'm hearing of it,' said Dr. Martin Ledger at a press conference. 'We found them in Building 7-C, which has been listed in our records as an equipment storage annex since 1987. They had desks, computers, graduate students — the whole operation.' The department, which has apparently been functioning continuously since 1962, currently employs four faculty members, two administrative staff, and hosts twelve graduate students, all of whom have been operating in what department chair Dr. Sylvia Bunting calls 'a state of productive obscurity.' 'We've published 340 papers, trained 200 graduate students, and discovered three new species,' Dr. Bunting said. 'The fact that no one noticed is, in some ways, the highest compliment. We are like the birds we study — quiet, unobtrusive, and surprisingly resilient.' The budget reduction, which eliminates all funding except 'the absolute minimum required to maintain the building's plumbing,' has prompted outrage among ornithologists nationwide. 'This is what happens when you study creatures that aren't profitable,' said Dr. Crowley of the American Ornithological Society. 'Nobody cuts the business school's budget. Nobody even knows where the business school is, either, but it gets funded.' Dr. Bunting has announced a fundraising campaign with the tagline 'We Exist.' As of press time, it has raised $47.