The College has reversed its decision to terminate employee death benefits, Provost Carol Folt and Executive Vice President Steven Kadish wrote in an e-mail message to College staff on Wednesday. The decision, which saw strong disapproval from retirees, was part of the effort to close the $100 million budget shortfall.
The policy will be reinstated for all current retirees, as well as any employees who retire before December 31, 2010. At that point, the policy will be terminated, according to the e-mail.
The death benefit which provided $5,000 in cash to the family of a retiree upon death cost the College between $150,000 to $200,000 annually, and was a unique policy among Dartmouth's peer institutions, College President Jim Yong Kim said in a previous interview with The Dartmouth.
In the e-mail, Kadish and Folt wrote that they had felt it was preferable to eliminate the benefit in favor of retaining other benefits, such as the Dartmouth College Medicare Supplement health insurance premium.
However, following the decision, many retirees spoke out against the change, particularly in the pages of the Valley News, whose editorial board also wrote an opinion piece against the change.
"It has since become clear how important this one-time $5,000 payment is to the planning and decision-making of many retirees and their families," Folt and Kadish wrote in the e-mail.
College staff had planned to hold a protest on Monday to lobby against the benefit's elimination.
Kim had previously said that while he understood the difficulty eliminating the benefit would cause, he felt it was a sound policy decision.
"Anytime you hear of retirees saying that they're having a difficult time, it's something that should concern, especially, me or anyone else," Kim said. "But we think the rationale for eliminating it was fairly sound."
