Ben Skalina at the Collegian just broke that Graham Spanier, in a Faculty Senate meeting this afternoon, significantly changed his tack in approaching the economic crisis.

Penn State President Graham Spanier introduced the possibility of laying off “select positions” at Tuesday’s University Faculty Senate meeting.

While he emphasized that budget savings would mostly come from leaving positions open through attrition, Tuesday marked the first time Spanier publicly disclosed the possibility of actively reducing faculty through layoffs.

Remember that on Friday, Spanier said this:

We do not anticipate resorting to any of the university-wide emergency actions being taken by scores of colleges and universities throughout the nation such as mid-year tuition increases, hiring freezes, mandatory furloughs, pay cuts, travel freezes, liquidation of endowment assets, and loans to meet basic operating needs.

He also contrasted Penn State with other institutions by saying that we have not had to enact lay-offs.

I guess he was saving the bad news for when the Board had left…