Following College President Jim Yong Kim's $100 million budget reduction announcement Monday, members of Students Stand with Staff voiced concerns about the proposed layoffs and lack of negotiations between the administration and staff, while other members of the Dartmouth community stood behind Kim's proposal.
Kim's budget cut announcement was somewhat vague in its justification for layoffs and many details remain unclear, Eric Schildge '10, co-founder of Students Stand with Staff, said.
"I think that the e-mail that he sent to the campus community was to a certain degree opaque and raised more questions than it answered," Schildge said. "I think that the College has yet to make the case that those layoffs were truly necessary."
There is a substantial disconnect between the proposed changes and the administration's claims of willingness to engage in collective bargaining with both union and non-union staff, Schildge said.
"How do you engage in good-faith collective bargaining while eliminating positions and laying people off?" Schildge asked. "It's disingenuous to say that these cuts have equally affected all members of the community."
Other students, however, were more supportive of Kim's budget decisions.
"I understand why [Kim] did these layoffs," Stephen Cheung '13 said. "I believe they were necessary."
Laid off employees will be adequately supported after losing their jobs, Christopher Jean '12 said.
"It does sadden me that they're losing their jobs but they have pretty good severance packages," Jean said. "It's not like they're getting thrown out on the street."
Cheung, like Schildge, raised concerns about the transparency of the budget announcement, noting that the promise to cut costs through administrative restructuring "was a bit vague."
Several sections of the budget have not yet been formulated, as administrators work to make targeted changes based on discussions with the campus community between now and the April Board of Trustees meeting.
The employee layoffs that Kim called for are "disappointing," said Earl Sweet, president of the Service Employees International Union Local 560.
The administration should have given the union a chance to provide input before making any decisions, he said.
"I was hoping that they would wait until we negotiated at the table before they started doing any layoffs," Sweet said. "They didn't give us any information that we had asked for about the finances or anything."
Kim should have also taken student input more seriously during the budget deliberations, Sweet said.
"[Kim] just shrugged them off and said they were being misled by the union," Sweet said. "I think it's really sad that he treated them in that manner."
The decision-making process was "rushed" and as a result the decisions made by Kim and approved by the Board of Trustees could have been improved, he said.
"I just don't think they've given anybody any time to question how authentic this is," Sweet said. "We have a lot of smart people on campus and I have a hard time believing that they couldn't come up with a better solution than this."
Thirty-eight employees were given four weeks notice of their termination on Tuesday, Sweet said.
Only non-union employees were laid off in this wave of layoffs, according to Sweet the first of two sets of layoffs that were announced on Monday.
Sweet raised concerns about the potential impact of additional cost-cutting measures including reductions in hours, increases in employee payments for medical benefits and freezes on raises.
"If you put that all together those are some pretty significant losses," Sweet said.
Although the number of announced layoffs was lower than anticipated, further layoffs beyond those publicly acknowledged could also take place, Sweet said.
Rumors about layoffs of up to 200 employees should have been addressed by the administration, Schildge said, although he said he was pleased that layoff figures were lower than many had projected.
"I want to know why the administration couldn't have dispelled those rumors sooner," he said. "That would have alleviated a substantial amount of the tension that evolved in the campus community."
Prior layoffs, voluntary early retirements and the new layoffs proposed on Monday will make for a total loss of 360 jobs, Schildge said.
"It remains to be seen how the College is going to fill that gap," he said.
A great deal of uncertainty with respect to job security still exists, creating difficulties for remaining College employees that will affect the student experience, Schildge said.
"From a management perspective that [uncertainty] can do a great deal of damage to morale," he said.
Even if laid-off employees are rehired, they will have lost their seniority in union voting processes and could suffer decreases in their compensation packages, Schildge said.
Students Stand with Staff met with professors and union members Tuesday night to discuss the cuts, Sweet said.
Future action and collaboration among the groups is likely. However, plans have not yet been formed, Schildge and Sweet said.
"We're all working very closely together, we're in contact with each other, there were a lot of ideas thrown around [Tuesday night]," Sweet said. "[The SEIU] really appreciates the effort that the students are putting out for us."
Schildge also said that Students Stand with Staff will act in the near future to clarify the positions they took over budget cuts, which Schildge said were misrepresented by the administration.
Non-union employees of the College did not attend the meeting because of fears that employers may penalize them for working with the union, according to Sweet.
"They wouldn't dare to go to something like that," he said, adding that the union hopes to give the non-union employees a voice.
At its Tuesday meeting, Student Assembly members discussed possible methods for measuring student reactions to Kim's announcement. Members hope to foster discussion between students and encourage student input on the administration's budget deliberations, according to Assembly spokesman Will Hix '12.
These efforts would be in collaboration with Class Councils and the Student Budget Advisory Committee, which includes Hix and the student body president and vice president.
"Student Assembly will be seeking student input in a very big way, not just in ways we've been doing in the past," Hix said. "We will continue to lobby on behalf of the students to the administration."
About two weeks ago, Students Stand with Staff proposed a resolution to the Assembly that would encourage the administration to give the staff more representation in discussions about budget cuts, according to Hix. The resolution was tabled, and has yet to be reconsidered, he said.
"We could definitely take it up again if we feel as if the student body is pushing for that," Hix said.
The Assembly has yet to take any official position on the budget cuts, according to Hix.
Hix said that in his own opinion he was "really happy" that financial aid would not be affected until 2015 and he said there were fewer layoffs than he was expecting. He also said he thought Kim successfully incorporated opinions of students in the budget process.
Hix emphasized that his personal opinion does not reflect the views of the Assembly or of the Student Budget Advisory Committee.
To avoid future endowment funding problems, the administration must be more transparent and accountable for the investment of endowment funds, Schildge said. He noted that Students Stand with Staff has called for the administration to strengthen the Advisory Committee on Investor Responsibility in order to establish broad investment goals for the endowment without giving students absolute oversight.
