Middlebury’s classism is genteel, and it’s easy to dismiss when times are good. This past month, it has become harder to ignore.
It’s the Trustee thanking the server profusely for the breakfast she just served him, then closing the door to discuss just how much to raise her health insurance premium next year. It’s the president describing us as a big family, before handing the mic to the senior administrator… who promptly reduces us to a series of numbers on paper, to be selectively compared with an amorphous mass of “peer institutions” in order to justify our leaders’ decisions. It’s the tenured professor graciously asking staff for their input on how faculty should protest the budget cuts, but not thinking to ask whether the staff might want to protest alongside them. And through all of this, it’s the hushed voices of colleagues in the break room saying, “If we just keep our heads down, maybe the target won’t be on our backs.”
It is clear that the decision-makers at the college are capitalizing on the tendency among staff to stay in our corner and uphold our side of the bargain: to skillfully do the jobs Middlebury hired us to do, to be good to our community and to avoid rocking the boat unnecessarily. The problem is that Middlebury College is not currently upholding its side of that social contract.
Through all the meetings, emails and op-eds, I haven’t yet seen acknowledgement that lower-income workers — a category many Middlebury staff fall into — are disproportionately affected by the economic turmoil currently shaking the United States. This economic uncertainty can be felt heavily in Vermont, with its low rate of expendable income paired with an ever-higher cost of living. Many staff were already wondering if we would be able to pay all our bills and put food on the table from week to week before our employer joined in the pile-on without warning — acting as though the budget deficit was a sudden emergency that must be solved immediately, rather than a years-long issue which could have been addressed calmly.
This is about more than the four percent cut to employee retirement benefits. Something as “small” as another increase in our out-of-pocket healthcare expenses could mean the difference between a staff member paying their rent or going into medical debt. Worse, the underlying threat of layoffs has created an existential fear, threatening the reciprocal goodwill between the employees who serve the institution and those who have been charged with leading it.
The Middlebury community has been told repeatedly over the past month that everything happening now is the alternative to The Other Option, which is to terminate 140 staff members. This narrative tells faculty and students that the sacrifices they are being forced to make are to “save” the staff. What it tells staff is that at the end of the day, we are expendable.
We have been told in one breath that there’s “no pressure” to accept the early retirement package, but in the next breath, reminded that if this plan doesn’t work, “other options” will need to be explored. We can all read between the lines to figure out what that means. It also tells us that no matter how thinly we are already stretched, we will likely be expected to take on the workload of anyone accepting the retirement package who is not replaced, presumably without added compensation. Not only is this unethical, but it ignores the crux of the matter. Middlebury is not just part of a mass of other institutions. It has its own structure, budget, identity and reputation — not only as a one-of-a-kind school, but as a good employer. That is what is really at risk.
At Middlebury, students are taught how to think critically and question the stories they are told. I hope all of us will exercise that skill moving forward.
To the senior leaders who are implying that staff are more expendable than faculty and students: Please pause for a moment and imagine what would happen if we stopped performing the often invisible labor that takes place on campus every day.
To the Board of Trustees: This institution has benefited for years from its ability to attract and retain highly qualified and loyal employees, in a region where staffing shortages are real. It would be shortsighted to continue to take that privilege for granted.
To faculty calling for collective action: Please don’t miss the opportunity to include staff in your efforts. We have more power together.
Most importantly, to my fellow staff members: The history of capitalism shows that the target is already on workers’ backs. Silence isn’t going to protect our livelihoods, but relentless self-advocacy might.
Caitlin Harder is the academic coordinator for the Religion and Anthropology departments, as well as the First Year Seminar program and the Administration Committee.
