Wilson School program cut as some faculty question layoffs

The Policy Research Institute for the Region (PRIOR) at the Wilson School will be shut down at the end of this academic year, as the University has eliminated the positions of the institute’s three staff members, along with 40 other positions across campus, effective June 30, 2010.

While President Tilghman has said that the University is “going to try to the greatest extent possible to match those who are laid off with other openings across the University,” there are no guarantees that employees whose positions were eliminated will be rehired.

Wilson School professor Richard Keevey, who has been PRIOR director since 2007, said he was not concerned so much with his own termination as with the termination of his assistants and the cancellation of the program.

“My particular interest isn’t in my layoff,” Keevey said. “I think it’s a shame that the only entity that singularly focuses on a daily basis on state, local and regional policy issues will no longer exist.”

Keevey said he remained hopeful that the University would find new positions for the other PRIOR staff members: assistant director Dale Sattin and program assistant Georgette Harrison. “I’m sure they will find a spot somewhere,” Keevey said, calling it a “mistake” for the University “not to pick them up someplace.”

Sattin declined to comment for the article, while Harrison did not respond to requests for comment.

University spokeswoman Cass Cliatt ’96 said some of the 43 employees who were laid off have already found new positions at the University.

“There were two positions in Richardson Auditorium that were merged,” Cliatt said. “Instead of two employees having to leave, one will fill the new merged position, and one will fill a vacancy at Frist [Campus Center].”

Cliatt explained that the cuts occurred “in a variety of offices across the University” and across job levels, but would not specify which departments the cuts affected or how many employees were laid off in each department.

Most administrators contacted for this article referred inquiries to Cliatt, and Dining Services Director Stu Orefice said that no employees in his department had been laid off.

Wilson School professor Stan Katz said he believed 10 Wilson School employees had been laid off. Wilson School Dean Christina Paxson did not respond to questions about how many positions were eliminated.

In April, administrators asked each of the departments to cut their budgets by an average of 7.5 percent in each of the next two fiscal years. Several departments decided to eliminate positions as part of their cost-cutting measures.

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PRIOR has offices in Corwin Hall, though its operating budget is covered by the Wilson School. PRIOR cost the University $450,000 a year, Keevey said, noting that the bulk of the budget went to pay employee salaries.

Paxson said in an e-mail that staff cuts in the Wilson School were consistent with its top priorities, which are “to maintain the quality of our educational programs, the strength of our faculty research programs, and the generosity of the financial aid we offer our students.”

Across the University as a whole, staff cuts were implemented so as to optimally “preserve human capital — the University’s employees — while also remaining committed to providing the services and support that contribute to the student experience,” Cliatt said in an e-mail.

Still, some faculty and staff questioned whether firing employees was the best way to reduce the University’s operating budget.

“I think asking senior faculty (best paid employee sector of the University) to sacrifice some absolute salary (and not just pay raises) would have been possible,” sociology professor Miguel Centeno said in an e-mail. “I realize that this could lead to people leaving, but if we are a community, shouldn’t we ask those who earn the most to give a little bit back before we sacrifice those who make the least?”

Katz said he is disappointed that, to his knowledge, the University did not discuss the possibility of temporarily using a higher percentage of funds from the endowment for the operating budget.

“There is nothing graven in stone and in law that requires us to put preservation of the current value of the endowment above all else,” Katz said, adding that “it seems that [the decision to lay off employees] is driven by that assumption.”

Katz said he would like the option to at least be on the table, but faculty and staff have “been told at the public meetings that it would not be prudent.”

President Tilghman said in an e-mail to the University community in April that administrators were preparing to spend 6.7 percent of the endowment during this fiscal year. But in a September e-mail, Tilghman announced that the University would spend only 6.04 percent — a difference of $83 million.

Centeno added that he “can attest from knowing several of these folks” that many of those who were fired were not “inefficient workers who deserved to be let go.”

At PRIOR, Keevey was left wondering how the University would fill the gap left by the closure of his center.

Since its inception seven years ago, PRIOR organized conferences, lunch seminars, and forums discussing policy issues relevant to the tri-state area.

About 350 people come to PRIOR’s larger conferences, Keevey said, including government officials who make policy on the topics discussed. After each conference, PRIOR compiles a summary of recommendations for those who attended.

“How are you going to fill the gap in addressing state, local and regional issues?” he asked.

Paxson said that the activities PRIOR sponsored will be sponsored by the Wilson School’s “external affairs office or subsumed under our initiatives in urban policy,” but Keevey maintained that other offices “can’t possibly do what we’ve been doing.”

James Coan ’09, who was an undergraduate fellow in PRIOR for three years, said that Keevey, who has worked as New Jersey’s state budget director and state comptroller, had helped him greatly with coursework by putting him in touch with state senators and legislators.

Coan said he had been very active in PRIOR as a sophomore, helping organize a conference about land use policy and eminent domain. The number of undergraduate fellows in PRIOR declined last year after the departure of a staff member in charge of coordinating undergraduate involvement, Coan added.

While other programs at the University address local education policy, Coan said he thought PRIOR filled a unique need in relation to other local issues.

“For these non-kid-focused local issues, you’d have to really stretch other programs,” he said. “For someone who looked at policy for the region, I don’t see where that person would fit in.”

Though their time in their positions is numbered, business continues as usual for PRIOR staff, as it does for the other employees in terminated positions. On Thursday, Harrison sent an e-mail advertising a lunch discussion on economic development in New York, and Keevey promised to keep up the same level of local engagement for the remainder of the year.