Campus of Earlham College INC.

What is happening?

Over the last two weeks, I have received several inquiries from former students asking about “what is happening at Earlham nowadays?”

What follows are my own personal observations and sentiments about the current state of affairs at Earlham College. I am sure that some of you who are on campus will disagree, but that is fine. Please share your disagreements…

I have been working at Earlham College for the last 26 years, and I have never experienced such a sense of urgency, anxiety, and fear on campus. As I approach the end of my career at Earlham College, I must sadly state that I have never felt more disappointed with the attitude of the administration at Earlham. It is clear my work in the classroom is not appreciated, let alone valued by the administration (This is not just a feeling, but a response to the administration’s assessment of our value.)

I understand that, like many other institutions of higher education over the last two decades, Earlham has gradually shifted from being an institution that educates students for a thoughtful and ethical life to one that prepares them for jobs as they are currently available.

The economic model underlying this shift is an explicit (or implicit if you are not aware of it) premise that education is a “product” and students are “customers.”

Such a model is so widespread now that it is accepted as “common sense,” “realistic,” and “inevitable.” However, this is not the case.

This model requires us to reduce costs by reducing compensation for labor. Under this economic model, “educators” are a cost factor in the final product.

Yet cutting jobs is neither a natural phenomenon nor an economic inevitability, but rather a business decision made by some leaders. Everybody seems to have accepted firing faculty and staff as an inevitability, but this is a choice! It is also clear to me that it is a choice that is going to hurt the education of our students.

The problem at Earlham is that the people who have been routinely making these business decisions are never accountable for the consequences of their choices. Sure, they may leave their jobs, but they do not experience the harm they might have caused to the College.

As a polite community, we do not speak ill of people, but we also do not assess the consequences of their decisions, except maybe privately.

Over the last decade, the control of the curriculum—supposedly still the purview of the Faculty Meeting--has been usurped by presidential decisions.

For example, in the last 5-6 years, we created new programs, majors, and epic initiatives by diverting resources from the existing programs and majors, and as the enrollment figures show, these have not been successful and have hurt other parts of the college.

We are now in a similar cycle. We will make decisions without agreeing on how we came to this position in the first place. The processes that would provide consultation to these decisions are conducted in secret.

If people do not understand and agree on the reasons for the financial trajectory of the College in the last 10+ years, they are not going to be able to make informed decisions.

I have the following questions for our process so far:

1. If the task of CWG (Consultative Working Group) is drafting a new strategic plan for Earlham, then why are their proceedings conducted in secret (behind NDAs)?

2. Is the “strategic plan for a new Earlham” a euphemism for firing faculty and staff? If not, why should it be conducted in secret?

3. Why are the minutes of CWG meetings not to be shared with the community?

4. Who and what do these NDAs protect?

5. The claim that confidentiality is for transparency is not at all convincing to me.

I myself do not feel protected by the NDAs my colleagues signed, and I am having a hard time trusting the process when my colleagues are not allowed to speak with me about their deliberations. How can I believe that the process is transparent if it is, by definition, exclusive?

When we are prevented from open communication, isn’t it inevitable that there will be gossip, speculation, and mutual mistrust in the community?

In fact, this is precisely what is happening on campus right now. Every single colleague that I spoke with expressed insecurity, frustration, and explicit fear. I even spoke with a student yesterday who was very anxious about expressing their views because they feared retaliation and being expelled from Earlham.

What is happening is not right! The campus is not in a good place.

In light of my experience of how discourse is controlled at Earlham, I can surmise that some people will say that I am overreacting, that the process to restructure Earlham is for the good of the College as a whole, and that there will be extensive consultation in this process. Such statements to reassure the community do not seem convincing to me right now. How can we expect people to be calm and trust a process that is not accessible to them, and that is explicitly trying to find ways to fire them?

So please do not be dismissive of people’s fears, just try to ameliorate the conditions that cause their fear!