To the Editor:
Professor Doug Irwin's letter to the editor ("Standing with the Students," Feb. 5) grossly misrepresents the position of the 75 faculty members who signed an Open Letter to Jim Yong Kim, Board of Trustees and the Upper Valley Community ("Standing with the Staff," Jan. 26). At no point did we propose that the entire $100 million budget gap would be covered by a tuition surcharge. In fact, our letter does not even mention tuition. To suggest that we are asking students to pay an extra $20,000 to avoid layoffs is not only a childish and transparent attempt to provoke a student backlash, but it borders on fear mongering of the most base sort.
To state, furthermore, that the College could do just fine with 1,000 fewer staff on the very day that the trustees arrive in town to make cuts, shows a callous disregard for the feelings of all those in the community who make Professor Irwin's (no doubt) brilliant work possible and who have been awaiting this moment with great fear for their livelihood. I can only hope that the next time the Robert E. Maxwell '23 Professor of Arts and Sciences in the Department of Economics chooses to enlighten us, he will do so with greater respect for the facts and elementary human decency.
