After two years of sacrificing for the university by going without raises, Boston University faculty and staff members can finally breathe a sigh of relief. As the cost of living in the Boston area has continued to rise, many faculty and staff members will finally get to pad their wallets a little bit. Especially after rewarding former president-elect Daniel S. Goldin with $1.8 million before he even set foot in a BU office, the faculty and staff who spend countless hours in their much smaller offices deserve rewards for their hard work.

President ad interim Aram Chobanian announced the decision to give faculty and staff merit raises, the first salary increases since January 2002, saying the raises became a “priority change” because faculty and staff members had gone without them for two full years. The raises will average 3.5 percent, he said.

The decision to give raises should not be seen as a gift from administrators, but rather as a reward for faculty and staff members’ hard work. Many other universities are facing hard times due to the troubled economy, but another year without salary raises would have been unacceptable. By not rewarding deserving faculty members with raises, Boston University would have lost important competitive ground.

Administrators told faculty and staff they could not take merit raises because of a tough budget situation, partially caused by an ambitious campus building program. But administrators rightfully recognized that though a modern physical plant will attract students to campus, it is the quality of the university’s faculty and staff that will push BU into the upper echelon of North American colleges and universities.

Students should be grateful to those professors who weathered the tough budget situation in the toughest way they could – through their paychecks. Had another year gone by without raises, those faculty members would have had every right to decide to leave. And while the economy is still unstable, BU has taken the right steps to continue to compete with other universities by rewarding its faculty and staff with rightfully deserved raises.

President emeritus John Silber always boasted that the BU’s pride rested in the strength of its professors and the beauty of its campus. Though BU’s buildings may create a comfortable place for professors to teach and research, it is the quality of the actual teaching and research that makes BU a good university. And while Chobanian has admitted that the decision to administer raises will cause cuts in other areas, the faculty has already helped the budget situation plenty.