Dozens of University of Vermont students and faculty members held a daylong “teach-in” Wednesday to protest the university’s proposed cuts in 23 humanities programs.
The event was held in anticipation of Friday’s board of trustees meeting — the first time since the dean of the university’s College of Arts and Sciences, Bill Falls, announced the cuts in December.
The board is not expected to make any decisions Friday on the cuts. The proposed terminations must first go through a faculty review process, which has not yet begun.
Ultimately, though, the board has the final say.
The “teach-in” livestream was hosted by UVM United Against the Cuts, a coalition of faculty and students that has opposed the proposal. Over the course of eight hours, faculty, students and alumni from an array of threatened programs made the case for their fields, via a series of short lectures and panels.
“We have a special role, as the flagship research institution in Vermont, to keep as many doors open as possible to our students,” said Sarah Osten, a professor of Latin American and Caribbean studies, one of the programs slated for termination.
The university, contending with a strained budget, proposed slashing majors including religion, geology, and several area studies programs, as well as several minors, on Dec. 2. Falls said he had selected the programs based on their relatively low enrollment numbers.
Two weeks later, the university laid off three senior lecturers in the College of Arts and Sciences — in the history, geology and English departments.
UVM United Against the Cuts has since led a sustained effort to reverse the decisions. Faculty say the university is disinvesting from the humanities, rather than looking for other solutions to address its budget woes. And the result, they say, is a narrowing education.
“Our administration pays a lot of lip service to fostering diversity on this campus,” Osten said. “But when we lose area studies programs, that undermines that goal in a really fundamental way.”
Two of the three lecturers who were laid off, Charlie Briggs and Jamie Williamson, also spoke Wednesday. In his presentation, Williamson emphasized the importance of his class on Native American literature — one of just three classes the university offers on Indigenous culture. This spring, he is teaching it for the last time.
Williamson called the university’s decision “irresponsible,” saying that field of study is already under-resourced at the university.
Uncertainty ahead
On Tuesday, UVM staff received some good news. In a memo to non-unionized staff, President Suresh Garimella wrote that the university was reversing pay cuts that were implemented early in the pandemic, one of UVM United Against the Cuts’ grievances.
Because of better-than-expected fall enrollment numbers, Garimella wrote, all staff pay will return to 2020 levels, and those employees will be compensated for the months they had worked for 2.5% to 5% less pay.
“It sounds like we’re doing a little better in this fiscal year than we had feared,” Christopher Burns, the president of UVM’s faculty senate, told VTDigger.
Burns expects Friday’s meeting to reveal further details about the university’s financials — which may affect the future of the imperiled 23 programs.
“I think a big outstanding question is how much of what we’re going through is a one-time pandemic dip. And how much are we going to bounce back, and recover,” Burns said.
Already, progress on the program terminations has been slow-moving. Although Falls’ initial December announcement said the review process by the faculty senate would “begin immediately,” it has not yet started.
The faculty review process is lengthy, and it is mandatory for any program cuts that are disputed — as many of the cuts are. Ultimately, faculty will vote on each program termination, and provide a nonbinding recommendation to the board of trustees.
Burns told VTDigger that the body has not yet received any proposals from the administration, owing to “conversations” within the College of Arts and Sciences about the terminations.
“I wouldn’t be surprised if nothing came forward by the May board meeting,” he said, though it was “possible.”
The board is slated to hear from provost Patricia Prelock on Friday about the proposed terminations, though the specifics of the discussion are unclear. Burns said he would be “shocked” if the board took any definitive action at this point.
Meanwhile, the faculty and students opposed to the cuts say they’re not going anywhere.
“They’re underestimating the Classics students if they think we don’t care about the long-term preservation of our department that we love so much,” Annaliese Holden, a sophomore at UVM, told VTDigger.
Holden spoke Wednesday at a panel on classics, yet another program that is on the chopping block. Thousands have signed on in support of the major, as they have for other programs.
“The task ahead is to continue to educate on these matters,” said Cobalt Tolbert, a senior at UVM, on Wednesday. “Not for the board of trustees, but for the larger community to get on board with the struggle.”
