The College of Behavioral and Social Sciences is in dire straits – due to inadequate funding, BSOS has been forced to fundraise tens of millions a year on its own to merely get by. The university’s largest school was responsible for 35 percent of the undergraduate degrees given out last year, but received the second lowest amount of funding, only finishing ahead of Arts and Humanities. BSOS has a desperate need for professors – the average class size on the campus is 37 students, tiny compared to economics (100), government and politics (88) and psychology (79).University administration and state officials need to work immediately to bring funding back from critical levels. Over the last few years, BSOS has engaged in several cost-cutting measures that probably reduced the quality of instruction. Early last year, the college stopped allowing faculty members to admit students on waitlists. This was intended as a stand on the part of the college for more funding. At the time, professors declared they were fed up with the university’s ambivalence towards their oversubscribed classes.Unfortunately, their pleas went unheard. When questioned by the Student Government Association about the underfunding of BSOS, university President Dan Mote responded by saying the program’s popularity exceeded university expectations. But how can this be true for so long? This is not a new issue, and yet no financial salvation is in sight.The quality of BSOS classes simply cannot be maintained when professors are so outnumbered. The college has always maintained it does not want to turn anyone away, but when will this become inevitable due to the sheer lack of funding?Certainly, the university administration doesn’t hold complete blame for the situation; it does not hold the purse strings – that is the power of state officials and Gov. Ehrlich. However, it certainly could yell louder and let the state understand just how desperately the school needs appropriate funding. And the governor better be listening. The state of Maryland should be ashamed to run a significant budget surplus at the same time the largest school of its flagship university is low on classrooms and professors.