Samuel Boudreau

News Editor

On May 2, Politico reported that the Supreme Court of the United States plans to overturn Roe v. Wade, a 1973 case that established the constitutional right for a woman to have an abortion, under the equal protection clause of the 14th amendment.  “The 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling relied on this clause when it concluded that prohibiting abortion violated a right to privacy under the Constitution by restricting a person’s ability to choose whether to have an abortion,” said Orlando Mayorquin of USA Today.  

In a leaked draft of the court’s decision, Justice Samuel Alito wrote that “Roe was egregiously wrong from the start. Its reasoning was exceptionally weak, and the decision has had damaging consequences. And far from bringing about a national settlement of the abortion issue, Roe and Casey have enflamed debate and deepened division.”

The leaked draft of the court’s decision sparked protests throughout the country, including Wooster, Ohio.

On May 3, Désirée Weber, an assistant professor of political science, announced a Reproductive Rights Political Advocacy Session from noon to 4 p.m. in Kauke Hall’s second floor lounge on the same day. Weber set out a few goals for the session, goals which called for Congress to pass federal abortion protections, drive people to local polls for the May 3 primary election and to research and/or support reproductive healthcare providers locally and nationally. 

A number of students and faculty members attended the session, writing letters to Congress, drawing posters and discussing future steps for demonstrations. One of those students, Samantha Harrison ’23 put the finishing touches on a poster stating, “Abortion Saves Lives.” “Banning abortions affects people of all gender and sexual orientation and is most likely going to cause people to die,” said Harrison. 

At the next-door table, Rachel Catus ’22, Veda Massanari-Thatcher ’23, Grace Braver ’23, Riley Smith ’22 and Katherine Yordy ’22 made plans to hold a demonstration against the Supreme Court’s decision on Thursday, May 5th at the Kauke Arch. “We plan to have an opening speaker come up and help people feel comfortable if they want to speak,” said Catus. 

Numerous faculty members stopped by the second floor to help meet the session’s goals. Beatrice Adams, assistant professor of history, sat down alongside Zoe Carter ’22, Isaac Schwartz ’23 and Beth Ann Muellner, Professor and Department Chair of German Studies and Russian Studies; Global and International Studies. “I am most scared with what this means for a host of other rights and things we assume are already set,” said Adams.

One of those faculty members, Tom Tierney, professor of sociology and anthropology, wrote a postcard at one table. “After waking to the appalling, but not surprising, news that the Supreme Court is poised to overturn a fundamental reproductive right,” said Tierney, “I was heartened by how quickly students (and faculty colleagues) sprang into action.” Tierney continued, “I was glad to be able to spend some time today supporting their efforts, although I wish I could have stayed longer, but I do plan to continue offering as much support as I can in the upcoming days as they organize rallies and other forms of resistance to this impending decision.”

Jonathan Logan

Editor-In-Chief

On the afternoon of Tues., May 3 a small group of faculty members and a handful of students gathered in the Lean Lecture Room of Wishart Hall to hear President Sarah Bolton speak on her administration’s decision to outsource Dining and Custodial Services. A larger group of faculty and staff members also gathered remotely over Zoom. Bolton began the meeting by rehashing the decision-making process and addressing questions that have frequently come up with regards to outsourcing. She described the decision as one driven by a need to “meet the demands of students” in addition to “managing complicated staffing needs.” While the meeting focused primarily on the outsourcing of dining, Bolton mentioned that they are still much earlier in the custodial outsourcing process. In an email sent out on the same day, the College informed the campus community that two final candidates for the outsourcing of custodial services, National Management and Marsden/Scioto, would be presenting on May 5 and May 6 respectively.

President Bolton continued her opening remarks by reiterating the expertise that Creative Dining Services (CDS) demonstrates and by summarizing the driving forces behind the ultimate decision: “The priorities in making these decisions were really, first, [based] around the needs of our students, and also, very much on supporting our staff.”  She concluded by restating that the these decisions were made in response to student demands as well as stating that CDS’s “main goal is to find the right ways to make themselves a place that people want to work – that good people want to work and stay – so, they are not financially motivated to cut costs.” Following Bolton’s opening statement, the meeting took on a town hall format and opened up to questions.

With regards to the outsourcing of Custodial and Dining Services, Dr. Amyaz Moledina, Associate Professor of Economics & Business Economics; Global and International Studies, asked President Bolton “does urgency justify the way folks have been overlooked?” Moledina framed his question by remarking on the lack of transparency and collaboration, “the things we are supposed to teach our students.” Bolton responded by admitting that “there are ways to do the process better than we did it.” She continued, “I can’t responsibly, and I know that the board feels this way as well, we can’t responsibly say we’re [going to] hit the pause button and redo.” Later in the town hall, Moledina also pressed Bolton on why the faculty had not been presented with financial data or a financial report regarding the outsourcing. This was part of the faculty’s demands in the petition released on April 12.

Mark Gooch, the Collection Management and Discovery Services Librarian, followed up by asking President Bolton how she intends to alter the process and include the broader campus community. “There are [going to] be important things for us to think about next year. For example, faculty bringing us their thoughts about financial stability, and there were really important conservations raised yesterday at the faculty meeting about faculty and staff retention,” Bolton responded after saying she is in conversation with incoming Interim President Wayne Webster about issues such as these and how they ought to be included in a new “governance arranged around these questions.” Bolton concluded by saying that she certainly believes they can do better in the future and detailed how some of Wooster’s peer institutions are “formalizing a shared governance process that goes beyond what we have in the Statute of Instruction, which is a document that lays out the particular rights and responsibilities of the board and faculty.” Shared governance lays out a framework for decision-making, advising and how consultation is carried out in conjunction with those roles beyond formal College statutes.

Dr. Ng Wee Siang Margaret, Associate Professor of History; Archaeology; Chinese Studies, inquired about the College’s plans for there being a hypothetical need for the College to breach the contract with CDS. Concerns were further raised over potential financial penalties or other sanctions placed on the College by CDS. Bolton stated that she believes the real penalty would be their inability to provide the campus community what it needs. “The financial penalty is actually not the thing I would worry about. What I would worry about is providing dining to our students; there is a financial penalty because we have a signed contract.”

Also present at the town hall was Jim Prince, Vice President for Finance and Business/Treasurer, who was asked by Voice reporters about his previous role as Treasurer at Kalamazoo College where, under his tenure, Kalamazoo outsourced with CDS (they had already been outsourcing with another company, but had grown dissatisfied with their performance). Mr. Prince was asked if their partnering with CDS was at all connected with Wooster’s decision to partner with the same vendor. Prince responded by saying “My relationship with Creative Dining had nothing to do with my connection to my last institution.” He further elaborated on how the College originally engaged with a consultancy that independently gauged the College’s list of potential partners. Prince continued by saying that this consultancy helped the College “think through who are some of the best companies out there?” Bolton and Prince, throughout the town hall, continued to express their faith in CDS’s future relationship with the campus community.

Samuel Boudreau

News Editor

Bolton and Staley defend the College’s decision-making process and outsourcing.

After an anticipative week, President Sarah Bolton and Sally Staley, Chair of The College of Wooster’s board of trustees, responded to the “Statement Against Outsourcing at the College of Wooster, April 19, 2022,” a petition started by Laura Burch and a group of faculty. First, Bolton and Staley addressed the petition’s clause which  states that the administration made the decision to outsource their services without mission-based rationale.” “As shared with the community over the last four months, the decision to work with outside partners to lead dining and custodial services was entirely mission-based,” wrote Bolton and Staley. Bolton and Staley cite food preparation along with “caring for spaces and health” as central to their mission-based reasoning for outsourcing, stating that “…the College has been really struggling to provide these crucial services, and facing increasing difficulties in doing so over multiple years (including before the pandemic),” In a January interview with the Wooster Voice, Bolton cited COVID-19 and the College’s “Connect, Create, Discover” strategic plan for reasons to outsource. “[O]ne of the pieces of  [the strategic plan] is that  we would carefully think about whether there were any places where the college should think about working with outside partners or contractors,” Bolton said in January. 

Staley and Bolton then took on the petition’s claim that the outsourcing decision did not use“precise data.” Our due diligence, involving interviews with people from many campuses, was thorough. While Bolton and Staley did not specifically name these “people from many campuses,” Jim Prince, Vice President of Finance and Business at the College, had experience working at institutions that outsourced their dining services. “My role was to bring to the president some thoughts on [outsourcing],” said Prince in January. “Part of that was due to the fact that I worked at other institutions where we have outsourced so I brought to her my background in both the positive and negative aspects of outsourcing.” One of those institutions was Kalamazoo College, where Prince served as a Vice President for Business and Finance from 2009 to 2019, who also partnered with Creative Dining Services. 

A contradiction emerged from the response and previous statements made by Bolton, as Bolton told the Voice in January that outsourcing dining and custodial services “Once we understood that we really felt we needed to go this direction, we certainly included other people on campus, like Marjorie Shamp and Mike Taylor in our conversation, but the decision is mine and I want to be super clear that that shouldn’t lean on somebody else.” 

While Bolton told the Voice in January that outsourcing was an administrative decision, Staley and Bolton’s response to the petition frame the outsourcing decision as “the Board’s decision. “Once we understood that we really felt we needed to go this direction,” Bolton said in January, “we certainly included other people on campus, like Marjorie Shamp and Mike Taylor in our conversation, but the decision is mine and I want to be super clear that that shouldn’t lean on somebody else.” 

“The last thing I would say is that we did share with the board that we were leaning in this direction but again this is not a board-level decision, it is an administrative decision,” Bolton also told the Voice in January. Staley and Bolton’s response to the petition appear to contradict Bolton’s January remarks, as the response states, “The Statement Against Outsourcing states there is no clear-mission based reason for the Board’s decisions to outsource dining and custodial services.”

One of the petition’s major concerns was  staff benefits, including tuition exchange and sick time. Bolton and Staley assured the community that tuition benefits will continue for dining and custodial staff members. Other benefits, however, are under CDS’ administration. “Partner companies may well have benefits that differ in some ways from ours – perhaps being stronger in some areas and less strong in others.” Several staff members expressed concerns over sick time, as the College will pay out 10% of an employee’s sick time by June 30, 2022, and CDS will honor unused sick time until June 20, 2024, forcing some staff members to spend all their sick time in a limited time frame. “It is unlikely that I can use 960 hours off [sic] sick time in two years,” said one dining employee. 

One of the petition’s main points was “shared governance,” which “refers to the joint responsibility of faculty, administrations, and governing boards to govern colleges and universities.” 

While Bolton and Staley said they “value” the concept, they stood behind the exclusive decision to outsource their services. “The responsibility for effective campus business operations, including the safety and well-being of all members of the Wooster community in support of our mission, lies with the administration and the board.” 

Regarding the petition’s demands, Bolton and Staley wrote that “We cannot responsibly allow the difficult situation with these critical operations to continue when it is clear that outside companies provide the support we need.” 

The College will hold an in-person meeting to discuss this topic on Tuesday, May 3, from 3:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m. As of April 26, the College has not announced a location for the meeting.