Daimys Ester García
Contributing Writer
Administration has excused their lack of transparency, blatant disregard for shared governance and recent mass firings by likening the College to a corporation. However, treating the College like a corporation empties the educational mission of any meaning, replacing it with logics of extraction, control and exploitation. A liberal arts college exists to cultivate curiosity, sound judgement and intellectual bravery; it forms people that can think beyond maximum revenue and minimum risk. The administration may tout its commitment to Wooster’s mission, but in the corporate model, that mission collapses.
This is because under the corporate model, education becomes a product and learning a transaction. Students become revenue streams, while faculty and staff labor turns into market deliverables; the protected disciplines are those that appeal to current markets rather than intellectual necessity. Most importantly, anything ‘slow,’ ‘difficult’ or resistant to measurement registers as inefficiency. It can be the only reason for the profound contradiction of “prioritizing Independent Study (I.S.)” while eliminating a member of the already overworked writing center, who had standing appointments with dozens of seniors, for example. Deep reading, mentorship, failures and intellectual struggle may all be high-risk endeavors that defy immediate utility, but those who commit to the liberal arts model understand that the long-term returns are crucial to a functioning society.
The administration and board of trustees would seem to care little for a functioning society, though — instead caring only about power and money. In order to maintain authority without accountability (the latest example in talk of the mass firing), administration insists that faculty, staff and students are all custodians of the academic enterprise. Yet, what they have created at the College is a perversion of said ideals. There is no shared governance: there is no evidence of transparency, collective decision making or respect for the expertise of any individual outside of those who kowtow to the corporate model.
Nevertheless, this recent mass firing does teach the College a few things: first, following the letter of administration’s demands does not equate to protection from layoffs. Former Dean of Students Ashley Reid championed changes to protest policies, shared no misgivings with changes in the Wellness Center and yet was let go. This sends a clear message to those who are afraid to resist: you are not safe just because you become a collaborator; when you become obsolete to their corporate mission, you will be let go.
Second, if administration insists that the institution is a corporation, then faculty can insist they are workers, not managers, of the institution. In National Labor Relations Board v. Yeshiva University (1980), the Supreme Court decided that faculty at private institutions could not unionize because their role in governance made them managers rather than employees. But it has been made clear that faculty’s role in governance at the College is empty performance; faculty are consistently overridden by excuses of budget models, enrollment targets or branding concerns. They are treated as having no expertise or power. There is enough evidence for faculty to unionize in order to contest precarity, defend academic freedom and resist the distortion of intellectual pursuit.
Third, staff already have the capacity to unionize; what has become clear is that they must. The College has relied on appeals to loyalty or mission to suppress demands of protection and humane working conditions for staff; this mass firing makes explicit that staff serve at the whim of the administration. Thus, staff can organize as workers whose labor sustains the College’s daily operations. There is enough evidence to refuse devotion to administration’s demands under the guise of educational mission.
Finally, students gain a sharper clarity in their role within the institution. If the College is a corporation, then the students become the sought-after client. Students can abandon the expectation of reverence to the institutional process that excludes them from real power. They can use their monetary contribution to demand transparency, accountability and change. Even if the administration is desperate to deny it, students hold the most power now.
The College of Wooster is not a corporation, but if administration insists it is, then they invite faculty, staff and students to act in kind.