Winter is going to be a bit colder this year at Oberlin.
Eleven members of the College community were told their positions were being eliminated Monday. Unless they switch to lower-paying vacant positions, they will be forced to leave by Nov. 30. Administrators eliminated six union positions, and five positions in the Administrative and Professional Staff.
Figures provided to the Review from the Finance Office stated that about $130,000 was saved by cutting and reducing union positions, and another $300,000 by terminating non-union office workers. With these cuts, and those positions vacated in the hiring freeze, the College has saved $2.8 million.
A spokesperson for the President’s Office said that the terminated A&PS employees, which include the College’s administrators and their employees who are not unionized, will be receiving one week’s salary for every year of service as a severance package. The Finance Office said that employees would also receive a month’s paid vacation.
Layoffs have not occurred at Oberlin since 1996, when College President Nancy Dye sought to clear up deficit problems. “If you need to shrink the size of your budget, it has to impact salaries and benefits in some way,” Vice President for Finance Andy Evans said.
The move, announced Monday at 9:00 a.m., was not wholly unexpected. Dye told the General Faculty on the Tuesday before Fall Break that layoffs were going to occur on Oct. 28. Union members said they, however, did not receive word.
On Tuesday, the Administration called for a special General Faculty meeting. It was the second in two weeks. Dye delivered a 50 minute address to the faculty.
Oberlin’s finances have seen a difficult several weeks since the Review last published. The Finance Office released information before break stating that the endowment had sunk another $40 million, from $519 million in June to $479 million in September. Most of these losses came from the rapidly deflating stock market.
“For the first time in Oberlin’s history, we will have had three bad years in a row,” Dye said.
“What we are experiencing is what every college and university that depends upon an endowment is experiencing,” Dye said.
To save money, she will also shutter the Oberlin Community Partnership office, she said. The President’s and the Secretary’s Office will also be sharing staff, since the senior staff cut one worker in the Secretary’s office. Another position was axed in the Student Union.
Dye displayed a series of graphs which showed that many aspects of Oberlin’s health are actually improving, despite the budget crisis. Admissions, development and other statistics show that Oberlin is on the upswing, she said.
“We are focused on keeping the many gains that we have made over the last five years in admissions, financial aid, in salaries, and in curriculum enrichment,” she said.
The General Faculty delivered resounding applause.
But union leaders delivered an angry response that same afternoon.
They slammed Dye for accepting a $100,000-a-year compensation package, which, they said, could have saved the jobs of three of their members.
They chided the College for allegedly allowing staff members to rack up personal frequent flyer miles at the College’s expense.
Some employees, they say, have made last minute changes to their travel arrangements and allowed the College to take a serious hit so that it can be placed on their personal frequent flyer balances.
And they condemned the College’s exorbitant holiday party, saying it cost $75,000-a-year, as a “shrimpfest.”
“The College has heard the suggestion that OCOPE has made and we have taken their advice and we are reducing the cost of the parties and we are looking to reduce other costs across the board in other areas as they have suggested,” Vice President for Finance Andy Evans said.
OCOPE leaders said they were unhappy that the College had resorted to layoffs. They stated that they had presented the Administration with various other cost-saving measures, but that to their knowledge, none had been adopted.
“We did factor in some of their ideas,” Evans replied. “Travel is one; we’ve cut travel back significantly across the board. We did listen to them. It was a good idea.
“We asked the leadership to canvas the membership with their cost-saving ideas… and then we thought very carefully though about them, in some cases rejected some ideas, and in other cases, pursued them,” Evans added.
Some members, union leaders said, may soon be without jobs. Seventeen OCOPE positions have been eliminated since the hiring freeze began, they said.
“But Nancy’s going to have a nice Christmas,” OCOPE Vice President Tracy Tucker said.
One of the terminated employees in the Secretary’s Office, Executive Assistant to the Secretary Kristen Jones, expressed her frustration Wednesday.
“The College is apparently in such terrible financial shape that they are willing to ruin 11 peoples’ lives in order to save that rather miniscule sum of $300,000, out of the total $2.8 million,” she said. “It certainly gives a good indication of the priorities of this institution; it’s truly a shame that integrity and empathy have been lost in an environment where the almighty dollar means more than a human being and his or her livelihood.
“Most certainly, the Oberlin men and women who risked their lives and fortunes to rescue one individual in Wellington more than a hundred years ago, would be turning in their graves to know that the Oberlin College no longer seems to have empathy for the individuals of its ‘community,’” Jones continued.
“A few less fancy dinners and Oberlin College cars would have made up that shortfall,” she added. “I hope they’re thinking about that when 11 people are out there struggling not to have to sell their homes.”
A former College employee, Sue Bommer, who was fired from Oberlin in 1996 when Dye took on the College’s “structural deficit,” offered her two cents in an e-mail to Dye, Evans and the Review Tuesday afternoon.
She called her 1996 termination, “one of the biggest heartbreaks of my life.”
“My position, I am told, was chosen for extinction because my salary and benefits amounted to the sum of money by which Human Resources was mandated to reduce its budget,” she wrote. “I was the senior A&PS in the department, but my longevity didn’t count.”
Seniority is not a factor in the decision for A&PS terminations, rather the work being performed, a College official said.
She accused an erstwhile employee in Human Resources of being “extremely unprofessional” and said she had “suffered abysmal treatment.”
“My termination felt like a slap in the face,” she added.
“Job eliminations do irreparable damage to human lives,” the alumna, and former College employee wrote. “It isn’t just financial loss that’s involved,” she added, “it’s [a] person’s sense of self-worth and purpose. It’s social networks, friendships, goals, and aspirations. It’s peoples’ retirement funds!”
“I guess some staff at Oberlin won’t have to worry about their retirement,” she added. “Arrangements have been made to assure that.”

Dye expressed her belief that Oberlin College remains a humane employer, and has done all it can to avoid layoffs.

The College only resorted to layoffs after a year of a “disciplined hiring freeze,” she said, “and worked to minimize the number of layoffs through a disciplined hiring freeze in which we eliminated 67 positions through attrition.”

We “will move through and out of this period of trouble,” she said. “In the very short term, we can now take a breather.”

President Dye would not rule out future layoffs.