One Oberlin Implements Oper ational Efficiency Strategies

One Oberlin Implements Operational Efficiency Strategies

The College has made changes to operational efficiency as part of the implementation of One Oberlin. Photo by Abe Frato, Photo Editor

Kushagra Kar Editor-in-Chief

Nearing the three-year anniversary of the College’s Academic Administrative Program Review, the administration submitted a situation report on the project to the Board of Trustees during their March 4 meeting. The AAPR was a year-long process that analyzed nearly every aspect of Oberlin’s budget and culminated in the One Oberlin report, which offers recommendations to solve Oberlin’s outstanding structural deficit.

Three primary sections recommend the bulk of institutional changes: Academic Reorganization, Operational Efficiency, and New Curricular and Career Programming. Through a series of in-depth articles on each of these sections, the Review will cover the impacts and current standing of One Oberlin, starting with Operational Efficiency.

The first observation under Operational Efficiency concerned personnel costs and administrative efficiency. As reported last week, the AAPR report cited total compensation across employee groups as approximately 60 percent of the College’s operating budget. The report indicated that there were two primary reasons for the size of this spending: hourly workers were being paid significantly higher wages than their counterparts at peer institutions, and the College was managing multiple health care plans for different employee groups at that point. In June 2020, the College announced that it was outsourcing dining and custodial services and officially severed its contract with the United Auto Workers, the union that represented dining and custodial workers. In turn, dining was outsourced to AVI Foodsystems, which signed a four-year contract with UAW to unionize their employees in February 2021. Custodial staff were outsourced to Scioto Services. This transition has saved the College $2.4 million in fiscal year 2021–22.

Meanwhile, all non-unionized College employees were transitioned to a Consumer Driven Healthcare Plan and Health Savings Account on Jan. 1 this year. While the shift is expected to save the College $1.2 million every year, Vice President for Finance and Administration Rebecca Vazquez-Skillings explained that the College won’t start experiencing those savings until fiscal year 2023.

“The new plan was implemented in January 2022, so there are no associated savings at this time,” VazquezSkillings wrote to the Review. “A portion of the savings in the first year have been reallocated to provide an increased lump-sum contribution to employees’ health savings accounts. The College will see the first year of savings from this change in FY 2023.”

Both the decisions to outsource employees and change health care plans were met with contention from the Oberlin community. In March 2020, more than 500 members of the community gathered in protest of the UAW decision, calling it union busting. A majority of faculty, meanwhile, have voted in favor of two motions to improve compensation: one last December that was rejected by the trustees earlier this month, and another motion last Wednesday. Additionally, approximately 200 students marched in protest of the current compensation model on Thursday, March 10.

Despite these criticisms from the College community, One Oberlin highlights the importance of preserving the institution’s relationship with the community — from the City of Oberlin, Oberlin City Schools, Mercy Allen Hospital, to other local business partners — with a focus on upholding its reputation as an employer of choice in the region. To that effect, community engagement programs range from a Climate Action and Mitigation plan to collaborative work with the Oberlin Business Partnership and the Downtown Stakeholders Working

See One, page 4

Sunday, March 20, 2022

4:39 p.m. A student reported the theft of their backpack from the second floor of Mudd Center. The backpack is a black North Face and contains a Macbook Pro, calculator, glasses, a 15-inch gray laptop case, AirPod headphones, and other miscellaneous items. A report was also filed with the Oberlin Police Department. 5:52 p.m. Students reported three nonCollege juveniles in the Science Center being loud and disruptive. Officers responded; the juveniles were located and identified. Officers from the Oberlin Police Department also responded. Parents were notified and the juveniles were escorted from the building. 11:59 p.m. Officers and Oberlin Fire Department members responded to an activated fire alarm at a Union Street Housing Unit. Upon entering the room in question, a strong odor of burnt marijuana was detected. After checking the room for signs of anything burning, several cups with ashes were located, along with marijuana, a bong, scale, and grinder. The items were confiscated and turned over to the Oberlin Police Department.

Monday, March 21, 2022

9:30 p.m. An officer observed vandalism on the wall ramp in the dock area of the Allen Memorial Art Museum. inoffensive graffiti was written on the dock wall with purple spray paint. A work order was filed for removal.

Tuesday, March 22, 2022

11:33 p.m. Custodial staff reported a bat flying around the fourth floor of Mudd Center. An officer and a maintenance technician responded. The maintenance technician was able to successfully locate and remove the bat.

Congress Simplifies FAFSA as Pressure Grows to Address Student Loan Crisis

Ella Moxley News Editor

In a spending bill earlier passed earlier this month, Congress made several changes to how students pay for higher education — delaying the implementation of the Free Application for Federal Student Aid Simplification Act by a year and increasing the maximum grant for Pell Grant Recipients by $400. The changes come amidst a larger national discussion about the future of the student loan crisis.

Most of the changes to the FAFSA will not go into effect until the 2024–2025 academic year, so the current first-year class will be the only class enrolled at Oberlin affected by the time the revisions go into effect. One of the most important changes included cutting down the 108 questions in the FAFSA form to a maximum of 36.

Despite the delay, some smaller changes have already gone into effect, such as the removal of a question about the Selective Service and another about whether the applicant had ever been convicted of a drug related offense.

“For students who had previously had some sort of drug arrest who had already done whatever they needed to do whether they served time or had gone through the legal process, this was almost like holding them accountable for that all over again,” Director of Financial Aid Michele Kosboth said. “So being able to take that off the FAFSA and say students don’t have to answer that question really felt like a social justice move.”

Visiting Assistant Professor of Politics Amanda Zadorian studies economic inequality and echoesd Kosboth’s sentiment, stating that the change is a step in the right direction.

“One thing I think is really great is that there’s now Pell eligibility for incarcerated students in the new FAFSA, and also drug convictions no longer count against you,” Zadorian said. “I think those are really important for equity. Big wins for equity.”

In the long term, the act aims to make changes to FAFSA to simplify the filing process. However, it is too early to gauge how these changes will affect the way in which Oberlin distributes financial aid or who will be eligible for government programs like the Pell Grant. The revised FAFSA will also include a new financial measurement called the Student Aid Index which will replace the current FAFSA’s Estimated Family Contribution.

“What’s coming next … are the changes to how the formula works,” Kosboth said. “That’s the part that we don’t really fully understand yet in terms of how it’s going to impact Oberlin students. [A] couple of the things that will change that we know, for example, is they will no longer look at how many students in the household are in college.”

The passage of the FAFSA Simplification Act and increased funding for Pell Grants may be a relief for students and their families who have to navigate the challenging process of applying for financial aid. Still, the changes do little to address the larger issue of the student loan crisis in the U.S.

Since President Biden’s election in 2020, progressives have pushed Biden to use his executive authority to cancel student loans. During his campaign, Biden promised to forgive $10,000 of federal student loans per person.

“This is something that has a long, long history — the idea of canceling all the debts to prevent an uprising of the lower classes,” Zadorian said. “The federal government holds $1.6 trillion in student loan debt. Which is a lot of money, but it’s only twice the defense budget that was passed for 2022. So it’s literally two years of federal military spending.”

Zadorian traces the history of the student loan crisis to the 1980s, when the movement towards austerity opened the door for greater privatization and a greater reliance on debt. As a result, many public universities became underfunded — a trend that continues to this day. This pushes students to seek out private education, which contributes to rising levels of student debt.

“Rather than going to a well-funded public university, where you pay a nominal fee for a quality education and emerge without debt into the world and become a productive member of society, instead, you’re expected to borrow against your future earnings to go to a private college to get a quality education,” Zadorian said. “And the promise there, the sort of social contract there is that once you graduate with that quality degree, you will find a job and be able to pay back the debt.”

Unfortunately this reality has not panned out for the nearly 43 million Americans with student loan debt who face widening income inequality and the difficult task of achieving upward mobility.

“People in that 1980s, 1984 generation who are not upwardly mobile are not able to pay their debt and buy homes,” Zadorian said. “Which means they’re not creating wealth by having that home asset, which is the primary way that Americans build wealth. And that’s going to have continuing implications as they age and become older.”