Yale may have a shortage of money, but there is no shortage of ideas on how to save.

Department heads across the University are in the midst of searching for ways to meet the 7.5 percent cuts in personnel and non-personnel spending. Some layoffs are inevitable, but most personnel reductions being made by leaving open positions vacant. Meanwhile, suggestions are pouring in about how to make the non-personnel cuts, which entail being more frugal with purchased goods and services, said Jane Lee, the director of business operations for Yale College.

[ydn-legacy-photo-inline id=”10716″ ]

Though the cuts are across-the-board, the solutions are highly localized, which is why the administration is soliciting ideas from the bottom up.

“We said, give us just your craziest ideas, even if you think they’re really crazy,” Lee explained.

And staff responded by the hundreds.

Lee said last week she had received 172 suggestions from staff members about how to save money. Some are repeats — serving less food came up about 10 times, she said — and it is not yet known which ideas will be implemented and which will not. The measures each department will take vary as much as the forms and functions of the departments themselves.

For example, coffeemakers are liable to go, Lee said. There will be less food served in meetings. Every printer will be set to print double-sided by default in order to save paper. Color copying, which is much more expensive than black-and-white, will also be curtailed.

“It adds up,” Lee said.

If departments can find more savings in such goods and services, Provost Peter Salovey said, they may not have to cut as much in personnel costs because, as he put it, “a dollar is a dollar.” Since departments want to avoid, or at least minimize, reducing staff, that creates an incentive to be more creative with reducing stuff.

Yale has made an effort to have wireless Internet in all offices. But since most staff use wired desktops, some are now saying that wireless could be eliminated.

Computers are also currently on a four-year replacement cycle, Lee said. What if this cycle were changed to five years?

One suggestion imagined a centralized ticket sales system for the entire University — from sports to arts — as opposed to the inefficiencies of the current overlapping systems.

Thermostats could be adjusted a few degrees to save on heating and air conditioning. Paper cups could be banned. So could the whole water coolers. So could printing out e-mails.

How about buying only refurbished furniture? What about taking Fridays off during the slow summer months? Could reports and publications be online-only? Do students need physical bluebooks printed and mailed? Do students still need landlines in dorms when everyone has a cell phone?

Some of the ideas have implications that have to be cleared in distant branches of the University. A suggestion that staff could clean their own offices for example, could rub against union contracts. Another idea, to rent out concert halls to external parties, could raise tax issues that have to be considered first by the General Counsel.

As the brainstorming continues, such “little luxuries” will be the first targets, Lee said. She said Yale College is committed to not cutting any program or any element that affects the education that students receive.

In other words, the budget cuts certainly will not force fewer courses to be offered. But their syllabi may have to be printed on both sides of the page.