Outraged
Alumni
To
the Editors:
As
an Oberlin College alum, I was outraged to hear that Oberlin has
laid off 11 employees. Oberlin recruits students largely from middle
class families claiming to prepare them to go out into the world
to help the poor and the oppressed. Yet apparently Oberlin College
has no problem pushing its own employees into poverty.
If you are trying to save $430,000 by cutting these positions, why
did you recently accept a raise of your own salary to $363,000 a
year? Why did you accept the $1,000,000 bonus that the Board of
Trustees recently awarded you? What on Earth would the President
of Oberlin College need all that money for, especially when many
of your expenses, such as your house and your car, are already paid
for by the College? Oberlin is exhibiting some of the very same
traits as giant corporations who reward their executives with handsome
bonuses while they layoff workers.
Layoffs not only add enormous stress to families dependent on those
paychecks, but they also will result in cutbacks in student services
and increased demands on the remaining workers to work harder to
compensate for less staff.
Clearly your excessive salary and bonus would be enough money to
afford to re-hire the 11 workers. If college administrators continue
to claim that the layoffs are unavoidable because of the budget
deficit, then you should not be afraid to put the college’s
budget on display for everyone to see on the college’s website
and on clear display somewhere on campus. The only reason you would
hide the information is if you are misallocating resources towards
your own benefits and salaries instead of sharing the resources
equally with the entire community, such as the laid off workers.
I urge you to immediately re-hire the workers whose families will
otherwise be seriously devastated by the loss of income that they
depend upon to feed their children.
–Ramy
Khalil
OC ’98
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