More than 70 faculty members, students and administrators lined the walls of the Administration Building's board room on Friday to express their concerns - some vehemently - about the medical school's possible move west, the reconstruction of MSU's colleges and teaching assistant cuts.

Many, such as Grover Hudson, linguistics professor and president of the MSU chapter of the American Association of University Professors, and Fred Dyer, chairman of the zoology department, said at the Board of Trustees meeting that they were more angry that the faculty was left out of major decisions than about the issues themselves.

"It's concern about the lack of trust we see developing between the central administration and the faculty at the university," Dyer said during the public comment portion of the board meeting. "We're the people who have to live with and implement the decisions made at this university."

Dyer, who represented a committee formed about a month ago to increase faculty voice in the university, said the group had eight separate examples where the university neglected to consult the faculty.

The instances Dyer listed include proposals to reorganize liberal arts colleges, move the College of Human Medicine to Grand Rapids, merge integrative studies centers, and expand James Madison College and Lyman Briggs School.

Alice Dreger, an associate professor at Lyman Briggs, said the university administrators need to place more faith in the people who are teaching MSU's students.

"The faculty and the administration are working to achieve the same goal," Dreger said. "We deserve to help sooner, we want to help sooner and we're qualified to help sooner."

Hudson said though the university did try to get input from the faculty, it was too late for most cases.

"The administration has presented its proposals publicly and broadly before asking for faculty consideration through (the university governing system) and has sought initially to engage faculty only through ad hoc committees and processes which it had itself established," Hudson said.

Despite the outcry about several issues at the meeting, MSU President M. Peter McPherson said he saw nothing unusual about the public's response.

"This is the process to me," he said. "It's logical you'd have a number of opinions, and it's reasonable to express their views like this."

Some people at the meeting took the opportunity to take jabs at the university's administration, specifically Provost Lou Anna Simon.

"We feel that her visions are short-sighted," Graduate Employees Union President Scott Henkel said in his address to the eight-member board. "Unfortunately, at this point, we've seen very little response from Simon."

Henkel said he fears massive TA cutbacks and the effect they will have on the quality of education. Maintaining a high number of assistants, he said, should be Simon's top priority when making budget decisions.

Simon, who left the meeting after Henkel's statement but returned five minutes later visibly upset, said the budget problem will affect everyone, but it's difficult for her to place one group or program over another.

"It doesn't make any one group more or less important," she said, teary-eyed after the meeting, adding that she was surprised by Henkel's personal remarks to her. "If we were doing this in the context of growing budgets, his concerns would be founded."

During Simon's brief absence, trustees Dave Porteous and Joel Ferguson interrupted the public participation portion of the meeting to express their concern about the attacks they said were made on Simon.

"There's no one - no one - that I know who cares more about this university, who works harder at this university," Porteous said. "(Simon's) service here is unmatched."

Ferguson said pinpointing the blame upon one person is unnecessary and ineffective.

"There were some cheap shots at her," he said.