placeholden

I'm not sure where to put this, or what it even is. By resigning my position during a time that budget cuts were already announced, I probably forfeited my right to rally support at an institutional level. For some reason, though, I feel like I need to share my opinions with people. I guess the internet has made megalomaniacs of us all. 

I feel like those of us who CHOSE to leave voluntarily rather than wait around to be laid off have been unfairly scapegoated for the loss of positions, when it was precisely this lack of security that led us to leave in the first place. 

As many of you are now likely aware, two Music department faculty members resigned during the past few weeks. Now that the decision is official by CWC that neither of these positions will be refilled, there are no longer enough faculty to offer a music degree to future students.

When I arrived at CWC just four short years ago, I was blown away. I was surprised that a place so small and remote could have such a tremendous culture. It seemed that everyone, from the highest level administrators to the newest hire in the custodial ranks, felt like they were part of something special and couldn’t wait to tell me about how great it was to work here. I am shocked at how dramatically things have changed in just a few short years.

I remember as a junior faculty member, it was not uncommon for people to extol the virtues of the institution based on things that made us unique. Qualities you could get at CWC that were not available anywhere else. CWC was a place where every student mattered, and our extremely low staff/student ratio was proof that we cared more for students than we did for convention. You could tell by talking to students that they felt it too, and I proudly shared with prospective students and parents how special the culture was and how much they could grow by being a part of it.

Now, unfortunately, the opposite is true. We are regularly barraged with presentations and meetings that detail how much we are missing the mark as an institution. Reminders are given about how unqualified our faculty are, how overstaffed we are as an institution, and how other community colleges in places we’ve never been are doing it so much better.

While it was stated by administrators that CWC will “maintain all current programs academic and non-academic,” this doesn’t exactly ring true in the area of Performing Arts. After losing 60% of combined faculty positions in Music and Theatre, there is no way that these degree programs will survive the next few years without adequate faculty to recruit and instruct incoming majors. So to suggest that CWC will “maintain” these programs seems to be sophistic and disingenuous considering the long-term implications of removing a majority of the faculty members formerly responsible for instructing these classes. Without the ability to offer a degree, the institution loses the ability to recruit traditional students of high talent, and these programs become solely dependent on community members to participate. Wordsmithing aside, there are two full-time Music faculty positions that don’t exist anymore. Call it what you will, but these are jobs that don’t exist anymore.

Often, difficult decisions must be made in dire financial situations. The fact that this sometimes cannot be avoided is not lost on the staff members who fostered the culture that was so appealing to many employees. Although all three professional associations (Classified Staff, Professional Staff, Faculty) expressed a willingness to accept furloughs and other reductions in compensation, these offers were overlooked in favor of reducing positions.

Our once-proud culture is under siege. Under siege by a placeholder administration filled with people who are actively seeking other jobs while cutting the jobs of people that they hardly know. The culture of selflessness and inclusion that was once trumpeted by employees has been replaced by one of competition, inadequacy, and fear. All the while, newspaper articles make the situation seem hopeless, that it’s solely the economy that is responsible. The unwillingness to consider pay cuts makes this stance seem incredibly unlikely. It seems to be painfully obvious at this point that these staffing reductions were already a desire of the administration, and the economic downturn was merely the Trojan horse that hid the axe. By the time that the community turns on CWC, and is no longer willing to provide support, the people that made these decisions will be gone, leaving the community to pick up the pieces. People don’t forget things like this, especially when mill levies and bond issues are on a ballot.