[B]URLINGTON — Students and faculty at the University of Vermont rallied Thursday to protest cutbacks in the College of Arts and Sciences, saying the changes will harm students.
A group of around 200 faculty and students gathered on campus to protest UVM’s decision to reduce faculty positions and increase class sizes in some introductory classes. Demonstrators also discussed the university’s decision to only bring one finalist in its presidential search to campus.
Suresh Garimella, the executive vice president for research and partnerships at Purdue University, is the “sole finalist” in the search and was meeting with groups on campus Thursday.
University administrators say the cuts are necessary to address declining enrollments in the College of Arts and Sciences, and that only a small portion of the college’s introductory classes will have higher class sizes in the fall.
The rally was organized by the university’s faculty union, United Academics, and the Coalition for Student and Faculty Rights, a student group.
“We don’t want more buildings, and we don’t want more administrators,” said Sarah Alexander, an English professor and the union’s president. “We want more classes.”
Two longtime non-tenured faculty are not being renewed for the upcoming academic year, and 10 more faculty are being reduced from full-time to less than full-time. The maximum number of students in some introductory classes will be increasing to 60.
CAS Dean Bill Falls told VTDigger last week that student enrollment in the college has decreased 17 percent in the past eight years, and the cuts are part of a wider effort to align staffing with student demand.
He said that when he became dean in 2015, the college’s staffing was similar to what it had been when CAS had more students before the 2008-09 recession.
“We knew that at that time we had to undertake a strategy to right-size the faculty to match more of where the students are and how many students we have,” he said.
Cobalt Tolbert, a sophomore philosophy major and a member of the Coalition for Student and Faculty Rights, said that the university administration was wrongly viewing education as a business.
“It’s clear at this point the administration has a financial incentive to worsen our education,” Tolbert said.
Only 12 percent of introductory level courses will see increased capacity, according to a fact sheet provided by the university. Falls and provost David Rosowsky also highlighted that $50 million of Comprehensive Campaign funding had been allocated to CAS from July 2011 to February 2019, along with $72 million in central funds from 2012 to present.
But faculty say the cuts to CAS are hurting both student experience and faculty morale.
Adriana Borra, a senior lecturer in the Department of Romance Languages and Linguistics, said she was worried her contract might not be renewed the next time it comes up. She said a decreased emphasis on the humanities would be bad for students.
“I have a hard time justifying with the administration why what I’m giving isn’t enough when tuition is what it is,” she said. “This place has changed in a way many of us are very sad to observe.”
Peyton Ashley, a classical civilization and anthropology double major, said that the cuts would make collaboration across departments more difficult.
“By taking away our faculty, they are taking away our opportunities and taking away our chances,” she said. “And not just ours, but future students.”
The university’s decision to only name one presidential finalist, after saying earlier in the search multiple finalists would be coming to campus, was also discussed at the rally.
John Forbes, a professor in the Department of Theatre, said that only naming one finalist was another sign of the administration’s decreasing interest in faculty input in university decisions.
David Daigle, the chair of the university’s board of trustees, told VTDigger earlier this month that a number of the most promising candidates in the search would not have participated if they knew there would be an open public process for multiple finalists.
He said the university decided to keep those people in the candidate pool, and that Garimella was not one of the candidates who objected to a public process.
