General Faculty Motion Rec ommends Solutions to Increase

OPINIONSOPINIONS

March 18, 2022 Established 1874 Volume 151, Number 15

OSCA Greatly Misunderstood by NonOSCA Students

Emily Vaughan

When I first decided to sign up for a co-op, I didn’t really know what I was getting myself into. I knew that I would be responsible for cooking some of my meals and cleaning up after said cooking, but I knew nothing about the bureaucratic and legislative aspects of being in a co-op. It wasn’t until I joined Pyle Inn co-op at the beginning of this school year that I learned what I was getting myself into.

With our hand signs during discussions, terms for pieces of equipment, and general culture, from the outside the Oberlin Student Cooperative Association definitively looks like a cult. There’s an air of mystery surrounding OSCA and how it functions. What is a Hobart? What about a DLEC or KitchCo? Why are we always talking about llamas? But beyond these questions about specific co-op rituals and terms, students who aren’t OSCA members lack a surface-level understanding of how the organization works. Just last week, the Review published an article (“Old Barrows, Brown Bag Co-ops to Remain Closed” The Oberlin Review, March 11, 2022) that called the nowclosed Fairchild co-op a housing and dining co-op, but it is widely known by students in OSCA that Fairchild, also known as Fairkid, was a dining-only co-op until it was closed in March 2020. In fall 2020, it was reopened as College-operated dining. Prior to the 2021–2022 school year, the building operated as a traditional residence hall, but it now serves as a first-year dorm.

Another co-op that has not been in operation since the shutdown in March 2020 is the Brown Bag co-op. Brown Bag allowed students living off campus or in Village Housing to pick up groceries and prepare food in their own kitchens. The College does not offer a similar alternative dining option, which greatly limits the abilities of students living in Village or off-campus housing to become independent and cook for themselves.

Oberlin requires all students to be on a meal plan. Even the smallest and least expensive meal plan is more expensive than OSCA, not to mention the fact that the cost per meal swipe is significantly higher for smaller plans. Unfortunately, OSCA is no longer as affordable an option as it could be. There is currently a policy in place that removes the amount students can save by joining OSCA from their financial aid packages, though OSCA is taking steps to counteract this problem.

On a more lighthearted note, I would like to offer some answers to common questions and misconceptions about OSCA.

Firstly, we eat more than rice and beans. Today, we had cheesy pasta bake and tofu! We also have granola, bread, and lots of other tasty baked goods.

The Hobart is what we call our lovely industrial dishwasher, nicknamed after the manufacturing company. Not too exciting.

A DLEC is a Dining Loose-Ends Coordinator. Each co-op elects two at the beginning of the semester. To quote one of Pyle’s DLECs, College third-year Sammy Siegel, “The job of a DLEC is mostly to lead discussions and elections and to do anything else that needs to be done around the co-op.”

And as for the llamas? Well, the llama is a hand symbol made in OSCA to propose an idea during discussion that will be voted on. It originated as a joke between friends in Harkness, and eventually spread to the other co-ops as a standard discussion procedure.

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General Faculty Motion Recommends Solutions to Increase Faculty Pay

Editors’ Note: The following motion was presented in Wednesday’s general faculty meeting by Professor of Mathematics Jeff Witmer as part of a broader conversation around faculty compensation. The motion was presented following the Board of Trustees’ rejection of a Dec. 15 faculty motion and passed with 86 percent voting in favor, four percent opposed, and 10 percent abstaining.

Jeff Witmer

Rationale: The future of Oberlin depends on having a strong and engaged faculty to deliver an educational program that attracts students to the College. All employees matter, and extracurricular activities will always be an important part of the life of a student, but we rise or fall based on the quality of the educational experience that we offer. Oberlin cannot expect to provide academic and musical excellence if we cannot attract and retain outstanding faculty, or if the faculty we have are demoralized. Oberlin has many needs and there are countless ways we could spend money, but investing in the educational experience through the faculty should be front and center. In its recent letter, the Board stated that spending on instruction and research, as a share of the budget, has remained “almost the same” since 2010, but the percentage

has actually dropped from 48.3 percent to 46.6 percent over the decade, with the difference between those two percentages representing close to $3 million in annual spending that is not, today, supporting instruction (e.g., through faculty compensation). This graph shows the most recent 11 years for which data are publicly available.

In 2013, the Board of Trustees made a commitment to improving faculty compensation, stating, “Oberlin College should set a goal of achieving salary parity (meaning the median of the salary range) with the Sweet Sixteen Schools in each continuing rank (Professor, Associate Professor, and Assistant Professor),” and “Oberlin College should establish a strategic indicator to monitor annual progress toward this goal.” Having an annual evaluation of where we stood relative to that goal indicated a serious commitment to investing in the quality of the faculty, but that commitment seems to have been abandoned.

For many years (2001–2015), Oberlin used a payout rate from its endowment averaging over 5.5 percent. The Board of Trustees determined that having such a high payout rate, well above the average used by peer institutions, was not sustainable and has set the FY22 payout rate at 4.4 percent, a figure that is to be reduced by 0.1 percent per year until it reaches 4.0 percent . However, reducing the payout rate to 4.4 percent , heading lower, has resulted in such severe budgetary constraints that faculty compensation has fallen well behind inflation, to say nothing of comparison to peer institutions.

It is true that the AAPR One Oberlin report — where one repeatedly reads of the academic and artistic excellence that must be provided by the faculty — recognized the need for budgetary reductions and some savings in benefit costs across employee groups, but the GF approval of that report was not intended to signal acceptance of a health care plan that, unique among our peer set, has no options. The College had already reduced retirement contributions and to follow this by the move to a CDHP-only plan will only make recruitment and retention of faculty more difficult in the years ahead.

Any spending today is implicitly taking money from the future of the College, but saving money for the future must be balanced against the needs of building a strong College today. The cost to faculty morale and to the ability to hire and retain quality faculty must be considered. We believe that the College has the capacity to invest in its future via the faculty. For example, increasing the payout rate by 0.3 percent would provide roughly $3 million per year (which, coincidently, is roughly the amount that has been removed from instruction and research support in recent budgets).

We know that the College’s resources are limited and that the demographic situation is going to get worse in the coming years, with the number of 18-year-olds declining. We think it is better to enter those years as a top-tier, if somewhat poorer, school than as a lower-tier, but relatively wealthier, school.

Peter Woods

On March 1, the Board of Trustees sent the kind of message to faculty and staff that has historically sparked civil unrest and even touched off revolutions in countries across the globe. On Dec. 15, 2021, the General Faculty voted on a motion asking the board to return to the faculty compensation plan of 2013 and restore to all Oberlin employees the choice between the Preferred Provider Organization and Consumer-Driven Health Plan health plans, to which we had access until Jan. 1 of this year. This motion had overwhelming faculty support, but we received a letter from the Board of Trustees in response that was not only antagonistic, but condescending. Rather than honor the 2013 commitment to ensuring competitive faculty salaries, the board has authorized President Carmen Twillie Ambar and her team to conduct a new, long-term compensation study, after which the trustees will reassess our calls for more equitable compensation.

The message was one of continued austerity. After years of belt-tightening, the workload has increased and wages have remained stagnant, with real earnings falling due to inflation. The board appears to believe that the sacrifices we have made are not enough and that the payoff we’ve been promised can be delayed indefinitely. The mood among the faculty, however, is one of growing impatience and even disenchantment.

While we wait, we have seen the salaries of other faculty members at our peer institutions rise. The matching of retirement contributions for tenured faculty members was suspended during the pandemic, and now we have lost our choice of health care coverage, with many seeing their copays and prescription drug costs triple. The result is that many great faculty members have left, are leaving, or are considering leaving, and it has become difficult to hire the best professors and offer the highest-possible quality education to our students.

The need for a new study was addressed at our most recent General Faculty meeting on March 16 of this year. It seemed as though President Ambar felt that nine years is a long time, and that it is important to take another look at the peer groups against which we are measuring ourselves to determine whether the comparison is reasonable. I and several of my colleagues feel that this sounds like a way of reevaluating where we stand among our peers so that faculty salaries at Oberlin will no longer be compared to the top tier of institutions.

This brings me to what is most concerning about the board’s attitude. Their letter noted that the two greatest sources of income for the College come from student tuition and donations. My concern, and that of many faculty members, is that our administrators are making decisions that specifically threaten both of those sources of income. In its pursuit of austerity, the board is dismissing the reality that faculty and staff here have been pushed past their limits. Because of this, the quality of an Oberlin education, and the very future of Oberlin, is at stake.

As I mentioned above, we are facing the threat of unsustainable attrition in our faculty ranks, and with salaries and benefits as low as they are, we are unable to replace those who leave with professors of equal or greater experience and expertise. Visiting assistant professors are hired in favor of keeping tenure lines open, and lecturers are hired in favor of visiting assistant professors. We will likely be able to fill the positions we need, but we will not be hiring the best. This environment is also convincing longer-serving faculty members to retire earlier than planned, which robs us of much-needed institutional memory.

At the last meeting, I was given the impression that one reason students cited for not choosing Oberlin was that it didn’t provide enough opportunities for internships or place enough students in careers outside of academia. This apparently necessitated that the College defer increasing compensation until we have captured a larger share of students who are looking for something other than a liberal arts education. But it is not the object of a liberal arts college to appeal to every student.

Oberlin has a long-standing reputation for being an incredible place for learning and growing as a human being and sending students on to great careers. We will never attract every kind of student, but instead of shoring up our ability to attract as many students who are interested in an Oberlin education as possible, we are trying to change the formula so that we can find broader appeal. This is not an effective marketing strategy and, when it comes to something as crucial as the future of Oberlin, it doesn’t make sense.

Every student I’ve spoken to has said that they chose Oberlin specifically because they wanted the legendary liberal arts education that this institution provides. They want a challenging environment that offers diverse and dynamic options so that they can choose how to educate themselves beyond the specific course of study they’ve chosen.

These students, and our faculty, know that success is about much more than having a well-paid job after college, securing an excellent fellowship, or getting into graduate school. Successful people are those who develop a lifelong love for learning, an enduring desire to understand the world around them in all its diversity, and the critical thinking skills with which they can ensure that truth and fairness guide both them and their communities into the future. One of the incredible things about Oberlin is that we provide the framework for this success by fostering an environment that is committed to educating the entire individual, not simply the career-oriented parts.

Much is made of the looming demographic cliff that threatens the future of all but the top-tier institutions of higher education. We are told that a better future awaits us and that, if we can tighten those belts one or two more notches, we’ll eventually get there. In the meantime, we are cutting funding to liberal arts at one of the best-respected liberal arts institutions in the country. As we race after the glittering object on the horizon, we are dropping diamonds from our pockets as if they weigh us down, and there is no guarantee that the glitter will be gold. In the end, it is the faculty who are paying the price out of our own pockets, while our students lose the quality of their education.

Letter from 2017: Faculty Salaries at Oberlin College

Editors’ note: This letter is a reprint from the Review’s Dec. 8, 2017 issue. This letter was sent in an email on July 17, 2017 to Chair of the Board of Trustees Chris Canavan by Professors Chris Howell and Kirk Ormand. In light of the continuing and increasingly fierce debates around faculty compensation, the Review has decided to feature this letter. The letter is published in full, with minor edits to style.

Dear Mr. Canavan:

Thank you for your communication this spring, in which you explained Oberlin’s current financial crisis and the board’s decision to freeze salaries next year. While we recognize the seriousness of our current situation, we find it inadequate and depressing that neither the board nor the administration has the leadership or imagination to address this crisis in any way other than by eliminating raises for faculty and staff.

Allow us to review a bit of recent history. At its June 2013 meeting, the Board of Trustees of Oberlin College approved a resolution to create “a new strategic indicator of success to monitor our position on faculty compensation, including appendices tracking the College’s progress by rank, with a goal of reaching at least the median among the Sweet Sixteen institutions in each continuing rank.” [Emphasis added.] The resolution also asked the College’s administration to “present a plan to the Board in December 2013 for achieving that goal.”

The board resolution followed from a set of recommendations proposed by a Joint Advisory Group on Faculty Compensation and Support composed of trustees, faculty, and administrators. It was a remarkable, and remarkably rare, collaborative process in which the members of the advisory group met regularly for a year and examined in detail issues of the appropriate peer group for comparison purposes, cost of living, salary relative to benefits, relative endowment size, faculty retention, and morale. It was only at the end of this exhaustive investigation that the recommendation to target the median of the Sweet Sixteen peer group was made.

It is worth remembering that the advisory group was created because of the steady and unmistakable decline in the comparative position of Oberlin faculty salaries. In 2000–01, Oberlin was ranked ninth in its peer group and the average faculty salary for all ranks was 1.6 percent below the median. By 2011–12, we had dropped to 14th and the average faculty salary was 7.5 percent below the median for the same peer group. To put that in terms of dollars, the cumulative loss of salary for the average Oberlin faculty member compared to the mean, without benefit of compounding, during that 12-year period was $48,400.

Following the board resolution, a strategy was devised by the General Faculty Council and senior administrators, and approved by the board, to achieve the faculty compensation target over a five-year period through increases in salary in two forms. First, salary pools of four percent per year in order to match the average increase of our peers so as not to fall further behind. Second, to add $400,000 to the pool each year for five years in order to catch up to the median.

It is important to understand that the salary pools of our peer institutions have consistently increased by roughly four percent per year over a long period of time. That is the reason the strategy adopted for reaching the median chose four percent salary pools to stand still, and $400,000 increments to catch up. Indeed, the median salary pool increase of our peer group for the last two years has been 3.8 percent and 3.9 percent. There is not yet compelling evidence to suggest that salary increases among our peers are entering a period of secular decline. And Oberlin’s strategy was working, albeit slowly. By 2015–16 we had clawed our way back to 12th in our peer group and more than halved the gap below the median to 3.5 percent.

The board resolution on faculty compensation was trumpeted to faculty in fall 2013, incorporated into the 2015 Strategic Plan (Strategic Recommendation 3.3), another broad-based, collaborative, and exhaustive process, and used in the materials advertising Oberlin to prospective presidential candidates.

That commitment lasted three short years. Faced with a structural deficit that some people on the board have been well aware of for many years, and with a short-term deficit in next year’s budget of $5 million, the board has taken the only step that they ever seem capable of taking when faced with financial strain: all non-union salaries will be frozen next year, a move that will not save even one half of next year’s deficit. The results are entirely predictable, and will be poor. Our salaries will drop to near the bottom of our peer group within two or three years, and we will remain there as a matter of financial strategy. Hiring and retention will suffer. Our best early-career faculty will leave, as several have over the past three years. Morale will plummet.

To reiterate: in choosing to both eliminate the catch-up increments and freeze faculty salaries, Oberlin has not only given up on its commitment to move towards the median of its peer group, but consciously decided to move in the opposite direction, towards the bottom of that group. The board has chosen to reverse a key recommendation of the Strategic Plan that it approved a scant year earlier.

That a board commitment proves to have a shelf life of only three years, that broad collaborative examples of shared governance are rendered almost instantly moot, and that the institution chooses to rely upon paying its faculty less than their peers, is depressingly familiar. The consequences for our ability to recruit, retain, and motivate an excellent faculty are equally predictable.