Faculty press UO leaders, protest over looming layoffs

Faculty frustrations with potential layoffs and program cuts at the University of Oregon came to the surface on Friday, Aug. 29, during a testy question-and-answer session with two top university officials. 

The University Senate’s executive committee held an emergency virtual meeting at noon and invited UO President Karl Scholz and Provost Chris Long to answer questions from faculty members on rumored terminations coming the week of Sept. 7. 

The meeting, which peaked at 200 participants, came hours after faculty members protested against the potential cuts in a campus rally organized by the faculty union, United Academics of the University of Oregon. The union claims that UO will terminate 25 tenured and tenure-track faculty next month, on top of the 42 employees who got layoff notices in June.

Scholz and Long opened the meeting with back-to-back statements, then answered questions from faculty members. Throughout the session, some attendees directly responded to the officials’ remarks with sharply critical messages in the meeting’s chat feature and with emoji reactions. 

In his statement, the president reiterated the university’s reasoning for the cuts: insufficient state funding, “overly generous” pension payments and expensive health benefit costs, labor contracts, and competition among universities to grow student enrollment. 

All of those factors converged to create a $25 million to $30 million projected budget gap when enrollment numbers came in lower than forecasted on May 1, Scholz said. 

“Our plans have been guided by two general principles,” he said. “That is thoughtful, shared sacrifices that no single group ought to disproportionately bear the brunt of the financial challenges we have, and then to try to do the least damage possible to the teaching mission and research mission of the university.” 

He said the university is making “very extensive” administrative cuts, but didn’t provide further details. Scholz said at a town hall in June that he didn’t want to cut administrators’ pay due to the competitive job market in higher education. 

The faculty union has argued that budget cuts disproportionately affect faculty and staff.

During his remarks, Long said officials have engaged with deans, department heads, program directors and the Senate Task Force on Budget Reductions over budget cut plans. 

Over the summer, officials shared “confidential budget information” with the task force, and have tried to “empower” deans to propose “creative solutions” that provided department heads and program leaders with opportunities to review initial recommendations, he said. 

“Input from academic leaders has informed our thinking,” he said.

Faculty questions

University Senate President Dyana Mason, a professor in the School of Planning, Public Policy and Management, began the session by asking Long to respond to professors’ concerns over the university’s commitment to tenure, given rumors that tenured faculty will be terminated. 

“My worry, I think my deepest worry, is that by eliminating the tenure protections that we have provided to people, we could be diminishing the University of Oregon in the long term,” she said. 

In response, Long said the university is not taking the situation lightly, and officials’ budget reduction plans do not undermine tenure as an institution. 

“The question of tenure itself is related to the opportunity and responsibility we have to pursue truth wherever it leads, and that is the cornerstone of tenure,” he said, adding: “We are making these decisions based on the need to address a structural budgetary issue, and that need is real.”

Faculty senator Spike Gildea, a linguistics professor, asked why the university is making decisions about cuts over the summer with a deadline in mid-September, given that many faculty members and students aren’t on campus to give input. 

“It just feels wrong somehow that we’re doing this in such a hurry,” Gildea said.

The faculty’s union has repeatedly cited a lack of involvement in budget decision-making as a chief concern. Professors said at the rally Friday that deans have invited department heads into private meetings over the summer to discuss how to implement cuts. They claim that depending on the program, department or school, plans for cuts appeared to be already decided by the administration.

Long said he was “very intentional” about talking with faculty before they left campus for the summer, adding that trustees have “made it clear” that they expect officials to address UO’s budget gap by the board’s next meeting on Sept. 15-16. 

He added that senate leadership formed the budget reductions task force to get more “meaningful feedback” and that the Senate Budget Committee met in late May and early June to discuss how to engage with the community over potential cuts. 

Senate task force on budget reductions

Attendees pushed back on Long’s characterization of the administration’s consultation with faculty. Senate Budget Committee member Pedro García-Caro, an associate professor of Spanish, said the committee wasn’t sufficiently consulted, including about the formation of a budget cut-specific task force. 

At several points, faculty expressed concerns that the administration is using the task force, whose activities and members haven’t been made publicly available, as evidence that officials have consulted faculty while making decisions, despite outcry about their lack of input. 

Long rejected that, stating that his conversations with the task force have been some of the “most difficult but also the most honest conversations that I’ve had with faculty about a pressing issue in a university in my career.”

Mason, the senate president, said in a Thursday email obtained by Lookout Eugene-Springfield that she assembled the task force in late July or early August because a smaller group that could meet more frequently would be helpful in tackling the discussions. 

She said she appointed members in consultation with senate leadership, adding that the group met with the provost and his team over the summer. Members include three recent senate presidents and two members of the Senate Budget Committee. 

Four of the six faculty members in the task force were faculty in the College of Arts and Sciences and two were from professional schools, according to the email.  

“I can say we were not informed of any final plans,” Mason said in the email. “I can also say that we spent a considerable amount of time raising the same points and concerns that many have shared.”

Toward the end of the meeting, a commenter asked if the task force could release a statement rejecting the notion that their interaction does not constitute consultation, and in response, Mason said it plans to do so.

Students also made statements at the meeting, including members of the student workers union and Graduate Teaching Fellows Federation and UO’s student government president, Prissila Moreno.

“Our ask is that President Scholz, you go back to the board and demand that there be a better process for this,” Moreno said. “You’re doing this behind the backs of the group of people that you say are necessary to run a stable institution.”

Long and Scholz left the meeting after an hour, after which faculty continued their discussion. 

Scenes from the rally

More than 50 people gathered on campus on Friday at 10 a.m. to protest the cuts coming to the university. 

Multiple faculty members and union members spoke on the steps of Johnson Hall, UO’s main administrative building, before an audience decked out in union T-shirts holding signs. Attendees cheered and booed throughout faculty speeches.

During his speech, associate mathematics professor Chris Sinclair, the faculty union’s secretary, said there are going to be up to three layoffs of tenured faculty in his department, which will then hire two associate professors. He told Lookout Eugene-Springfield that he heard the news about two weeks ago “through the grapevine” because faculty aren’t receiving official information.

He said that when the mathematics department head asked the dean of the College of Arts and Sciences if he could share some information with his department, he was told no. Sinclair said he started looking for other job opportunities when he heard about the alleged department cuts.

“In what universe is there a process by which three people are let go, three tenured individuals are let go, and two are brought on in a period of three months without any consultation?” Sinclair said into a megaphone. “How can we say tenure exists? It will not. This is the death of tenure.”

He also claimed that the university has plans to hire 25 new administrators in the upcoming academic year.

Jeff Schroeder, an associate professor of religious studies, spoke next and said officials plan to eliminate his entire department, including colleagues who have worked at UO for more than 20 years and those hired just last year. 

He said in an interview that students have recently emailed him and colleagues expressing deep concern about program eliminations, adding that he expects to hear more of their worries when they return to campus.

“We cannot let this happen,” Schroeder said. “It would set a very dangerous precedent.” 

In a statement, UO spokesperson Angela Seydel said officials are finalizing budget reduction conversations, and their actions are expected to include layoffs of faculty and staff because almost 80% of the educational and general fund budget is “invested in people.” 

UO anticipates average budget reductions of 4% for administrative units and 2.5% for schools and colleges, she said. 

“Every member of our community supports our mission in meaningful ways, so we are working to ensure that no single employment group bears a disproportionate share of reductions, while prioritizing the student experience, maintaining the university’s core mission, and building renewed momentum to meet the challenges facing higher education,” Seydel said in an email.

She declined to answer specific questions sent by Lookout Eugene-Springfield — including questions on Scholz’s claim of administrative cuts and the three mathematics faculty members that Sinclair alleged will be terminated — stating that university administrators cannot address specifics until the week of Sept. 7, after details are shared with the UO community.