CASTLETON — Nearly a hundred people participated in a student-led rally at the Vermont State University’s Castleton campus on Thursday afternoon, protesting proposed cuts in programs and faculty jobs.
The university system has been seeking to trim spending after posting a $22 million deficit last fiscal year.
The rally participants, including a marching band, gathered outside a campus building where several state legislators were meeting with union representatives for the university’s faculty and staff. The legislators streamed out of the building to see the protesters.
“Cuts are in the wrong place,” one participant yelled.
“Admin is bloated,” a couple of people said.
“There are jobs in the arts,” the group chanted.
They were alluding to the recommendation of VTSU Interim President Mike Smith to eliminate 10 degree programs starting in the fall of 2024, affecting music; performance, arts and technology; and photography, among others.
He said those programs currently enroll 77 students, less than 2% of the student body.
Smith’s draft proposal also identified 13 degree programs that should be consolidated with others, many of which appear to be similar. For example, the university could merge a program in architectural and building engineering technology with one in architectural engineering technology. A degree in health promotion could also be folded into a health science degree, or be discontinued.
The program cuts and consolidations would eliminate 20 to 33 full-time faculty jobs — between 10% and 15% of the university’s 207 faculty positions.
University administrators are soliciting feedback on the recommendations until Friday and will make final decisions by Tuesday, the day before a new interim president takes over.
Aria Drew, a senior in music education, gathered about 20 students to form the marching band at the rally. She said the music and performance programs that Smith recommends eliminating prepare students for important jobs, such as creating music that people listen to as they go about their days or writing jingles for advertisements.
“Arts are important,” Drew, 21, of Antrim, New Hampshire, told VTDigger. “It’s involved in everyone’s lives.”
Emily Macias, a junior in social work and sociology, said the proposed cuts will erode the Castleton campus’s identity as a liberal arts college. She said it would also hurt the local community in the form of lost jobs and educational opportunities.
Macias, who is from Moapa Valley, Nevada, thinks the university leaders might adopt the recommendations, no matter what students, faculty and staff say. But she said it’s important not to stay silent.
“We’re speaking out to show them, ‘Hey, you can’t just do this with nothing from us, right?’” the 20-year-old said. “Even if it doesn’t change anything, we’re gonna fight.”
When they met with state lawmakers on Thursday, representatives of the university’s faculty and staff unions reiterated their recommendation to trim what they described as “bloated” administrative positions, rather than the jobs of people who teach and interact with students on a daily basis.
Linda Olson, a sociology professor who represents VTSU faculty for the American Federation of Teachers, said junior faculty members are being laid off even before people have had an opportunity to take offered buyouts. In addition, she said, some positions have been left unfilled after people quit their jobs.
“There are staff positions that are paid so little we can’t find people to do them,” Olson said. “In our building, for example, which is the largest academic building, we are now required to remove our own garbage because we can’t get a person to clean the building.”
The union representatives — from the campuses in Castleton, Johnson, Lyndon, Randolph and Williston — are hoping they can persuade area legislators, who hold the pursestrings and craft policy, to provide stronger oversight of the state university system.
Will Notte, D-Rutland City, told the protesters: “I don’t want to speak for everyone, but there are a lot of legislators that have said this is not acceptable, and we need to see what we can do.” He said the Legislature doesn’t want to see the state colleges fail.
Sen. Brian Campion, D-Bennington, who chairs the Senate Committee on Education, was part of the legislative group. He said administrators, faculty and staff are all important components of a university system, so deciding where to cut involves a careful weighing of various factors.
“It’s going to be a complicated question, and it’s a balancing question,” he said in an interview.
Five other Rutland-area lawmakers attended the event: Sens. Brian Collamore, R-Rutland, and Terry Williams, R-Rutland, Reps. Robin Chesnut-Tangerman, D-Middletown Springs, Mary Howard, D-Rutland City, and Jarrod Sammis, R-Castleton.
Last month, in response to complaints from faculty and staff that VTSU employs too many administrators, Smith vowed to examine the institution’s administrative positions and their effect on the budget.
When VTDigger asked the university administration to comment on the student protest and union representatives’ meeting with lawmakers, spokesperson Katherine Levasseur sent a reporter a copy of an announcement that said Smith would release the details of the university’s cost-savings plan on Friday. She didn’t comment on the events on Thursday.
