By Grace Cardinal, Editor-in-Chief
The Office of the President released an email this past week readdressing the combining of the School of Liberal Arts, the Kakos School of Science, the School of Health Professions and the School of Continuing and Professional Studies into one entity.
This email was the first time the office has directly addressed the issue of the recent faculty and staff layoffs. These new changes have been met with mixed reactions with alumni, current students and faculty voicing their opinions and concerns.
Teresa Ramoni (TR), Manhattan College alumna, class of 2020.
The Quadrangle (TQ): How are you feeling about the combination of the schools and the resulting layoffs?
Teresa Ramoni: For me to see this thing (email) saying “well received”, saying “limited faculty”, it’s just outright misinformation. We understand if the college is in a bad financial place, and hard decisions need to be made. And I would expect at the very least, that the leader of the college, who’s supposed to embody these Lasallian values would be able to write a message that conveys his deep sadness about those layoffs, that conveys how dramatic it’s going to be for the people who lost their jobs…To me, this is just trying to save face.
TQ: Has this situation changed your opinion of the college?
TR: I used to be proud and eager to recommend this place to other prospective students…Now there’s no doubt in my mind, I’m not going to recommend Manhattan College to anyone anymore. I had such a wonderful experience there, and now that I know who’s being laid off, which programs are being cut, the experience that I had is not possible for other people to have anymore.
TQ: What change do you hope to see from the college in the future?
TR: I think that there needs to be a town hall about what’s going on. The president had said before the break, that there will be opportunities to talk about this in the new year. I think there needs to be transparency. How much debt is the college in and why is it in that debt? To whom is the money owed? Because if there’s a significant financial problem, then odds are this (layoffs) might not even fix it.
Adam Arenson (AA), professor and chair of history
The Quadrangle: How are you feeling about the combination of the schools and the resulting layoffs?
Adam Arenson: What faculty wants to do more than anything is teach students. So when the college is solving its budget crisis by cutting faculty, that’s very painful for all the faculty.
TQ: Has this situation changed your opinion of the college?
AA: It’s clear that higher education is in a moment of challenge and only by having more students get college degrees and having more people invest in making colleges a place for knowledge creation will the situation get better.
TQ: What change do you hope to see from the college in the future?
AA: The college needs to communicate better about its strengths and it needs to do more to attract students. If there are going to be cuts, we need to see that those are being shared by the administrators personally and we need to make sure we’re spending money on the things that matter the most to students and their families.
Michael Plugh (MP), associate professor of communication
The Quadrangle: How are you feeling about the combination of the schools and the resulting layoffs?
Michael Plugh: I think there’s been a combination of shock and anger from what I can tell. There was very little clear communication from the administration about their process despite repeated inquiries. It wasn’t so much a discussion from what I understand and it ended up being a lot more like a mandate. The things that they (administration) communicated to us didn’t end up being the way it played out and so in the immediate aftermath of the layoffs, the first thing I noted was there was a lot of shock.
TQ: Has this situation changed your opinion of the college?
MP: I feel like this process has been a devaluing and a humiliation of teachers at Manhattan College and of the Lasallian mission in general and that’s disappointing and disheartening. I think we see this across higher education to an increasing degree, but it’s especially disheartening when there’s so much talk about that Lasallian mission… I think institutions are only as good as the reflection of the values of the communities that they come from…I know the faculty are committed and invested in making sure that the institution continues.
TQ: What change do you hope to see from the college in the future?
MP: The first thing that has to happen is that there has to be more shared governance. Without that, there’s no college. I get the sense that the faculty having made sacrifices now in personnel and benefits need to see our commitment respected and honored in how the administration is sharing whatever the future looks like with us, and not simply dictating to us new terms of our employment and new terms of the institutional arrangement. And if the faculty aren’t at least 50/50 partners in making those decisions, then I don’t think that this is going to go well for anyone.
Isabella Demelfi (ID), sophomore psychology and criminology major
The Quadrangle: How are you feeling about the combination of the schools and the resulting layoffs?
Isabella Demelfi: It’s just frustrating because from what we do know through professors, we know the reality of it. We’re all adults, the youngest person here is 18. We all know how life is. I wish it was just more transparent, being like, “Oh, we’re having some financial issues, so we think combining the schools is the best for our school right now.”
TQ: Has this situation changed your opinion of the college?
ID: My opinion on the school hasn’t changed. I love the buildings, I like my classes, I like the way the layout is, I like the school. And the professors are great. I cannot imagine getting laid off randomly for no reason other than we (administration) went “eeny meeny miny moe” and because we had to get rid of some people. My view on this staff has changed, but I don’t want to say incredibly changed because yet again, he (President Riverso) was handed this problem he didn’t create. He didn’t help it, but he didn’t create it though.
TQ: What change do you hope to see from the college in the future?
ID: Transparency. I’m not asking for the world to change. No one likes to be kept in the dark. Being aware is so helpful. Being in the dark makes everyone so frustrated and so mad.