The University of Colorado system’s Board of Regents approved its $6.84 billion budget for the 2026-27 fiscal year and denounced recent student comments on last year’s firebombing in Boulder during its regular meeting on Thursday.

An increase from last year’s $6.7 billion budget, total allocations include $369.9 million for the Colorado Springs campus, $2.54 billion for the Boulder campus, $407 million for the Denver campus and $3.39 billion for the Anschutz Medical campus in Aurora.

The new budget includes increases to tuition rates, housing and dining fees, and campus financial aid. It also reduces overall research expenditures by $87.1 million across the four campuses, with most of the decreases seen at Boulder ($60.4 million) and Anschutz ($21.2 million).

Of the four campuses, only the University of Colorado Colorado Springs is projected to decrease its student enrollment next year by a rate of 1.4%. It will see a 3.5% tuition rate increase for undergraduate resident students and a 3% increase for undergraduate non-resident students. No graduate students will see a tuition increase.

UCCS announced a five-year plan to address a shortfall of $27 million in January, after years of implementing short-term and one-time solutions to budget needs. In his presentation to the board, CU Vice President and Chief Financial Officer Chad Marturano detailed budget-balancing measures totaling $11.1 million for next year.

Savings include $2.6 million in reduced stipends and work hours for employees and $6.6 million in salaries from 75 vacancies. No filled positions are projected to be eliminated and $1.5 million will be allocated for one-time pay increases.

Marturano, said there will be an update on UCCS’ five-year budget projections at the board’s September meeting.

There were some CU employees who attended the meeting and disagreed with the priorities taken with the budget.

Ahead of the vote, Chloe East, CU Boulder professor and vice president of the campus union, United Campus Workers Colorado, said the budget “does not prioritize the needs of workers at CU or students at CU.”

“This budget raises tuition and fees for our students, it squeezes the finances of workers, families and students in this state who are already dealing with big cost-of-living increases,” she said.

East and others who provided public comments asked the board to introduce a resolution ensuring collective bargaining rights for campus workers, which some regents announced they intended to introduce in January.

Pearl Street attack anniversary

Near the beginning of the meeting, the board passed a resolution denouncing the glorification of violence and antisemitism.

The vote came days following the one-year anniversary of a domestic terror attack against pro-Israel marchers at the Pearl Street Mall in Boulder, when a student group known as “Boulder Students for Justice in Palestine,” glorified the attack and called for the release of Mohammed Soliman, who was sentenced to life in prison last month.

On Jun. 1, 2025, Soliman threw two Molotov cocktails into a group of Jewish demonstrators engaging in a regular march in solidarity for the release of Israeli hostages in Gaza. The attack killed one person and injured 29 others.

In a post that has since been deleted, the student group called the attack “a case of chickens coming home to roost” and “the only sane response available to a rational human being confronted with the normalization of genocide.”

CU Boulder issued a statement in response to the post the following day, saying that the group doesn’t speak for the campus and that it “is not a recognized student organization because it has failed to remedy policy violations and complete necessary requirements after being initially placed in bad standing in fall 2024.” It specifically pointed to compliance with the university’s nondiscrimination policy.  

“We join with one voice to condemn in the strongest possible terms recent statements made on social media of an unrecognized student organization and anyone who would minimize or condone antisemitic acts of violence,” the regents’ resolution read.

“Harming and killing innocent people is not resistance. Those actions do not lead to justice and they should never be celebrated.”