(THE PICKET) – In an email sent to faculty and staff of Shepherd University on Friday, Interim President Sylvia Manning announced a 2 percent raise for staff, regardless of retention, as originally stated.
The response comes 14 days after The Picket published an anonymous letter from an untenured faculty member discussing the low pay and financial difficulties for staff.
“I think that the issue of low salaries and hardship has been politicized and made public by The Picket, by the editorial I wrote and most significantly by the anonymous letter (The Picket) recently published,” political science Professor Jacob Stump said in an email.
“I fear this 2 percent raise is just a move by administrators to keep faculty quiet,” Stump said.
Stump wrote that the 2 percent hike is long overdue and comparatively too small for the amount of years the staff did not see salary increases. He continued that his pay is below average compared to equally ranked staff at Shepherd and peers at other institutions.
“I would urge faculty to continue to make noise, to organize and to push for changes to the institution,” Stump said. “We cannot expect the institution to look out for us – at least that is my experience.”
Stump added that staff must push back and said that (the teaching staff) is valuable to the university, “perhaps the most valuable component of the educational institution and our compensation should reflect that value.”
“Students and teachers are the center piece of any college or university, yet their voices and their situations are not properly factored into administrative decisions at Shepherd,” Stump said.
The second editorial, published in The Picket as an open letter to incoming President Mary J.C. Hendrix, submitted by an untenured faculty member, was posted to the employee email on Dec. 2. By late afternoon Friday, more than a dozen faculty members had posted comments, the vast majority lamenting the low pay scale at Shepherd. A suggestion by a faculty member that faculty unionize received some support and information was shared about how that could be accomplished.
“I am afraid that many faculty members are also very concerned and feel that they might not be able to work here much longer. Not that they are afraid that they will get fired, but because they cannot afford to work at Shepherd University,” wrote the anonymous faculty member.
Stump said he rents a room from another faculty member because he can’t afford rent and utilities on his salary.
Many faculty and staff have taken second jobs to make ends meet.
“…These are not teaching jobs but the same kind of jobs we would expect our students to do,” the anonymous faculty member wrote. “For new faculty members it is very difficult to buy a house or even rent a decent place to live which will accommodate their families.”
Stump noted that while faculty pay is low, University executive staff salaries are more substantial.
“I would be willing to bet that the executive staff do not face the hardships that faculty face because their salaries are so much more,” Stump said.
In early fall staff was notified that they likely would not see a pay raise unless the university could retain 2 percent more students.
“We have recently been informed that a pay raise is not in the cards unless we retain 2 percent more students. Judging by our retention history, this is an unlikely scenario unless faculty members start to lower their standards for students to pass their classes,” the anonymous faculty member wrote.
Manning confirmed that based off current projections for spring 2016 enrollment, student retention will not meet the full 2 percent.
“A goal that might have been unrealistic given how late in the semester we began the new initiatives, we did make some progress,” Manning wrote.
“The raise is due to Interim President Sylvia Manning finding a way through a revised FY2016 budget to fulfill the possibility of a 2 percent raise,” Valerie Owens, executive director of university communications wrote in an email.
The vote took place at the Board of Governors meeting on Dec. 3.
“The Board of Governors agenda item 12- as distributed at the board’s Dec. 3 meeting stated, “It is recommended that the board approve this across-the-board percentage increase rather than any merit allocations, in the context of wage conditions that have prevailed during the past four years (salary increases of 2%, 0%, 1.25%, 1.50% and nothing since July 2014),” Owens wrote.
Manning noted in her email that the faculty list-serve, a way of communications between faculty members, was active discussing inadequate salaries, “arising from years of meager or no increase and compounded as they are by the declining values of health-care benefits and our relatively high cost-of-living locality.”
Todd Bowman is a staff writer for The Picket. He can be reached by email at tbowma04@rams.shepherd.edu or on Twitter @todd_bowman87.