AAUP Response to March Cuts
March 9, 2024
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The SNC chapter of the AAUP writes to express its alarm at the firing of 12 junior faculty yesterday: cuts that come on top of the 41 layoffs in the fall. We recognize that we write during a time when many colleges and universities are struggling to steward the resources for the teaching, learning, and service that sit at the core of a transformational mission. It is because we understand the gravity of the challenges facing higher education that we are deeply dismayed by these aggressive cuts to the people doing the essential work of the College, which exceed the recommendations of the CEPC and Interim Faculty Senate and ignore the alternative cost-cutting measures generated by our AAUP chapter.
Faculty and staff have repeatedly demonstrated their commitment to working toward the long-term sustainability of Saint Norbert College. When members of the administration radically transformed the charge of the CEPC – citing the Board of Trustees’ vote requiring a balanced budget as the reason for pursuing a full-College program prioritization process in a single academic year – members of the faculty wrote a petition to the Board asking for an extension of the timeline to allow for thorough research and careful consideration and to help ensure the value of the committee’s recommendations. Board Chair Frederick Schmidt responded by reiterating that the charge to close deficit gaps within the year was the driver behind the timeline for program review, and the Board urged faculty to continue working with interim VPAA Mike Marsden and President Laurie Joyner to address issues of revenue. The AAUP chapter heeded this guidance by organizing a workshop at which faculty and staff created a list of creative possibilities for meeting present and future financial challenges by expanding on the best of what SNC can offer in key areas of our mission. This list, which was shared with the administration and with the Innovation Task Force, included steps toward closing budget gaps – like instituting graduated salary cuts or temporary matching freezes – that had not been presented as alternatives to layoffs.
The cuts made on March 8 jeopardize our ability to realize the creative futures we imagined and to survive and thrive in the hard years ahead. The firing of junior faculty and staff represents a critical loss of capacity, not only for our ongoing efforts to develop innovative programming but also for our work to nurture the relationships of support, service, and mentorship that make Saint Norbert distinct. As faculty and staff, we know our working conditions are students’ learning conditions. And by pursuing cuts with long-term effects on the College’s ability to serve its students in order to address a short-term requirement in budgeting, we risk producing a temporarily balanced budget at the expense of our community’s future health.
We call on the administration to immediately reconsider the decision to fire junior faculty and instead to seriously consider the cost-cutting measures our AAUP chapter has proposed. Administration should address how their faculty and staff cuts serve the mission of the College and explain why faculty and staff were not presented with alternative options for reducing personnel costs. We call on the Chair and other Board members to meet with the community to share with us what efforts they have undertaken to support the health of the College’s finances and to ensure that budgeting priorities are mission-driven.
We want to do the work of serving the broader community, our colleagues, and our students, and we cannot do it successfully without a renewed commitment to communio and to the mutual esteem, trust, sincerity, faith, and responsibility that sustains it.