news-record.com

NEWS

Advertisement | Advertise with Us

Greensboro College trustees address concerns about finances

Sunday, May 10, 2009

(Updated 3:00 am)

By Joe Killian
Staff Writer

GREENSBORO — The Greensboro College Board of Trustees met Thursday amid staff unrest over slashed salaries, budget cuts and questions about the school’s future.

“The faculty and the staff are concerned, and they have a reason to be concerned,” said Bob Stout, chairman of the Board of Trustees. “These are their jobs. This is their future.”

Last month, the school announced layoffs and a 20 percent cut to salaries for its remaining employees, including its 75 teachers.

Stout said the trustees discussed an anonymous letter purporting to be from the faculty and questioning the school’s leadership in the current financial crisis.

“The faculty’s concerns center on the College’s finances and the management of those finances over the past decade,” the letter read.

The letter went on to say the faculty believed the college’s financial troubles predate the recent economic downturn, which college President Craven Williams has blamed for the trouble. Among other grievances, the letter also said the faculty haven’t been provided timely and accurate information about the true depth of the problems and haven’t been given enough input into decisions about budgeting.

The letter is one of several anonymous missives that have been floating around the campus for weeks. Williams has said he will not respond to anonymous letters that he can’t confirm actually come from staff and faculty.

Stout said he believes the letter is genuine.

“I read it, I understood what they were saying, and I replied to it,” Stout said. “I sent a letter to the faculty saying we have heard their concerns and we want them to know we’re doing what we can to answer their questions, to get to the bottom of what’s happened and to create a plan for the future that will work.”

Stout said he believes the college’s problem goes beyond the fact that it lost about 40 percent of its endowment — more than $1 million — in the market downturn.

“I think it has been a mixture of the downturn, of the country’s economic problems, and also of our not growing our incoming freshman classes in the way we thought we would,” Stout said.

Stout said the school of about 1,100 makes the bulk of its money from student tuition, room and board — which is now at $30,688 a year, with a 4.5 percent increase coming next year.

“We’ve had much smaller freshman classes in the last few years than the budgeted figures,” Stout said.

Reported giving to the college also is down by about $1 million.

Tony Jernigan, the school’s vice president for finance, resigned last week, citing personal problems, according to Stout.

The trustees announced Thursday that Naviscent Group of Charlotte has been contracted to help put the college on a more sound financial footing.

“It’s going to involve some borrowing to keep us going, getting gift-giving back up, and some more cost cutting,” Stout said. “It’s going to be hard, so I understand why people are concerned, why they want to know what’s going on.”

Stout said the board has put together a plan that will unfold throughout the summer into the fall semester. He didn’t share many details, but said the faculty and staff will be kept in the loop as things move forward.

“We think it’s going to work,” Stout said. “We believe in the long run we’re getting the college back on track.”

Contact Joe Killian at 373-7023 or joe.killian@news-record.com

Accompanying Photos

Staff photo (News & Record)

Photo Caption: The campus of Greensboro College.

What do you think?

16 comment(s)

Read other visitors' comments.

Comments

This article has been closed to new comments. Comments are generally closed after 14 days. However, comments may be closed earlier at the discretion of the News & Record.

Inappropriate content? Please notify us.

BatsintheBelfry

May 10, 2009 - 8:38 am EDT

Trustees, nearly three hundred individuals of the faculty and staff are now depending on your integrity and collective wisdom. You will be changing lives and families with each decision. (The President is now irrelevant.) The faculty acted as a unified body. The letter to you, the Trustees, was unanimously approved by the faculty through official vote at an official faculty meeting, with the results to be recorded in the official minutes. We are documenting the 170+ year history and future fate of the College. The letter included the point that reductions in faculty AND non-teaching staff will hurt the academic program. The positive experience our students have at Greensboro College and in the academic program depends on staff as well as faculty. Mr. Stout, we are listening carefully to what you say, and we want to believe you. Your three e-mails have been more communication than we've had in many, many years.

collegehill

May 10, 2009 - 10:17 am EDT

Greensboro College claimed record enrollment in September of 2008. The school also claimed to have 1,301 students.

GCalum

May 15, 2009 - 10:53 pm EDT

The problem isn't the recruitment of the students. It's the retention - students do not want to live in residence halls that are falling apart. For many years a fresh coat of paint was considered a "renovation"

The buildings are falling apart not to mention inadequate parking and a outdated student center. Until those problems are fixed, no one is going to stay.

And yes- the staff are treated badly as well. There was no "voice" for the staff at all....

newkid

May 10, 2009 - 8:14 pm EDT

Am I reading this correctly and doing the math right? The college's total endowment before the economic downturn was less than $3 million?!? (i.e, they lost 40% of it, and that was a bit over $1 million). That sounds like very thin ice even without a recession.

gcwas4me

May 11, 2009 - 3:23 pm EDT

It seems to me that there is some lazy reporting going on! If the reporter was told that the letter from the faculty was reputed to be 'anonymous', did he actually ask any of the faculty if such a letter was written by them?

Has Mr. Jernigan been approached for his insights about the financial situation? I believe he was at GC less than two years - some of the comments made in the articles I've read seem to be trying to pin blame on him when, in fact, the College has been struggling for more than 10 years.

It's my understanding that Boards of Trustees are legally and financially responsible for the College or University - have Board members been asked why they have not provided better oversight of the College during Williams' time in office or why they have not contributed financially to the College?

Where is the Methodist church in all of this? Are they pleased with Williams' performance? Where is their oversight of the College?

Those on the outside of the academic world may not understand that the only people on a campus with any job protection whatsoever are tenured faculty. Staff or part time faculty who attempt to discuss matters could find themselves unemployed. REAL questions need to be asked about this mess instead of accepting blanket comments that reek of condescension from Williams and Stout.

GC deserves better. The students, faculty and staff deserve better. Someone needs to get to the bottom of this.

logicfairy

May 12, 2009 - 2:09 pm EDT

"Those on the outside of the academic world may not understand that the only people on a campus with any job protection whatsoever are tenured faculty. Staff or part time faculty who attempt to discuss matters could find themselves unemployed. "

Too true. There are many ex-employees of GC who have been fired on a whim, scapegoated to cover bad management decisions (CW's M.O. for years, from my observation), or left in disgust, unable to stomach witnessing the way that GC employees are treated. I've heard from people who wanted to sue, but in NC we have no employment rights. If we ever got together all the disgruntled ex-GC faculty and staff in this town, it would be quite a meeting. I hope that the faculty and staff do not back off and use their power to bring down this regime. If they stick together and don't let themselves be bullied and intimidated, they could be a force for good.

Rubia

May 17, 2009 - 3:59 pm EDT

Mr. Killian needs to pin down the difference between the meaning of an "anonymous" letter and a "unanimous" letter. They are not the same thing. Somewhere along the line, he is getting erroneous information.

LettuceAlone

May 11, 2009 - 5:43 pm EDT

Yes, I read the emails from Bob Stout, and the person who said that it was the most communication we have had from the Board in years is absolutely correct! The feeling we get from the Board is that we are to bow before them when they come around, then vanish as the White House Servants were directed to do during the Clinton administration. The members of the Board seldom come around, and when they do they don't visit with the likes of us, the faculty and staff who keep the College running. They spend their time with each other buying whatever Craven Williams sells them. They don't talk to us. They don't ask for our input. They just come to see and be seen, for the most part. I am, of course, generalizing here, since there might be the lone Board member who actually does speak to faculty and get to know us, but I have no personal knowledge of such.

Everyone on campus knows that Tony Jernigan, who had only been with us for a couple of years, was FIRED!!! Oh, perhaps Bob Stout and Craven Williams, or Bank of America asked for his resignation; perhaps Tony was given the option to resign or be fired, but it was not Tony's idea to resign, even though Bob Stout said in one of his missives to us that all our financial problems occurred at Tony's "untimely and coincidental resignation" [sic] Please Mr. Stout, do you really think we are that stupid?

And even though Craven Williams stated that no hourly employees' salaries would be cut, we know that is NOT true. There are over 40 hourly employees who are paid by the hour and who are eligible for overtime, and their pay was cut 20%. The only people who did NOT receive a pay cut were the six (6) folks in housekeeping, who are already making a pittance as it is. I am tired of hearing Craven's spin on this issue. Stop trying to make it not sound quite so bad. Again, we aren't stupid. We talk to the amazingly talented and grossly underpaid support staff who work along side us, and we know what's going on!

I think that it is time to ask for Craven Williams' resignation. He has been there too long. We need to repair the damage at Greensboro College and return it to better than it was before.

Greensboro College is a wonderful school, and my years there have been rewarding in many ways, the least of which has been financial. Though I have degrees from large state universities, I wish that I had attended GC or one like it when I was college age. I know the kind of attention, commitment and love the faculty and staff give to the students. That sort of dedication cannot be bought. It comes from the heart. I want to see GC rise from this horrible situation and be the great institution it always was, and I believe we can do it.

To the Board of Trustees...please do not leave us out of the loop. We're in this together and we want to help find a solution. Don't treat us like outsiders.

collegehill

May 11, 2009 - 7:04 pm EDT

The statements Greensboro College puts forth don't make sense. First, it is the economy that brought about this disaster, then it is low freshmen enrollment. What is the next reason for the problem?

What exactly is the endowment? If it was really that low that a 40% drop was a million dollars, what has Craven Williams been doing to raise it over the past 15 or 16 years?

Finally, Craven Williams is supposed to be a great fundraiser. What happened to the giving level?

gcwas4me

May 12, 2009 - 8:54 am EDT

Isn't the GC president the same one who was fired when he was president at Gardner-Webb?

LettuceAlone

May 12, 2009 - 5:49 pm EDT

Yes, that was the rumor I heard.

brokenback

May 13, 2009 - 11:07 am EDT

I don't believe that's a rumor; it's a fact. But, back to logicfairy's comment about the staff at GC having no job security or say in what happens to them. Years back there was a committee called "Staff Affairs." Although the committee didn't really have any clout and knew it, at least there was some effort by the college to make the staff feel like maybe they were thought about when decisions were made. The convener of this committee was the VP of Finance. Gradually the committee quit meeting and there was only one member, the VP of Finance. There seems to be some type of conflict of interest there.

Also, there was one person that was deemed a "necessary cut" a few weeks back that hasn't been mentioned. She is a single mom with three children -- a SINGLE MOM WITH THREE CHILDREN! Doesn't it mention somewhere in the Bible that the women and children are to be cared for? If Greensboro College is a "College of the Church," I certainly don't want to be a member of that church! It's about time the Methodist Elders made an appearance and took a look at how the Methodist church is being represented. As a matter of fact, do they know that when a GC employee has a spouse or child die, he/she is given three days off. After that time, if they take additional time to take care of details, or maybe, perhaps even grieve, they must use VACATION time. Now, that's quite a vacation! Where is the compassion that is mentioned a few hundred times or so in the Bible? The administration that made these and many other heartless decisions needs to go and GC needs to be restored to the institution it was meant to be.

Joelle

May 13, 2009 - 11:37 am EDT

GC WILL BE RESTORED WHEN CRAVEN WILLIAMS IS GONE. JUST GO ALREADY.

logicfairy

May 14, 2009 - 11:40 am EDT

Anyone who has ever worked at Greensboro College for any amount of time knows that Williams holds and wields all the power there. All of it. No one, including the rest of the administration, has any power. There are many good people in the administration at GC. I remember the Staff Council. It was a waste of time, and any efforts to do anything that suggested that we were anything but one big happy family was met with anger and was stomped down.

BatsintheBelfry

May 15, 2009 - 10:48 am EDT

The "Counterpoint" piece sent by e-mail to employees of the College is a problem. It raises all sorts of questions. Just what is the current endowment figure? No qualifications about recession, etc.--just give us a number? Have we borrowed against the endowment? That's not supposed to happen in American colleges. The faculty letter asked the Board of Trustees to address overall level of indebtedness of the College. Mr. Stout's Counterpoint piece skips over increases in indebtedness, which makes the figures meaningless. How indebted are we? The more we hear rosy glasses cheerleading, the more pointed questions we must and will ask.

The News and Record has done a good job getting at some basic issues. I'm pleased with Killian's reporting giving the smokescreens he must be encountering. The media have not emphasized sabbatical loss, so that's baloney in the Counterpoint. We have only 1 benefit left that I'm aware of. We lost dental and retirement fund matching. Housekeeping--how many people are left? Please, worry less about Craven Williams' reputation than the College. Your sworn duty is to Greensboro College and its proud history and significant alumni, not one person at the top. Why downplay 20% cuts in our salary?. Look around at other colleges. How many have you seen that cut 1/5 of salaries? Nationally? Go ahead and compare the number of 4 year colleges that have been as severely cut as Greensboro College. Your counterpoint draws attention to the big gap between what all (or all but 1?) of the employees at Greensboro College feel (people who work on campus every day year after year) and what some of the trustees (on campus a couple of days a year) may want to believe.

On the other hand, double snaps to the Trustees for raising enough money to keep the boat afloat for another month or two. And to give him credit, Mr. Stout should be applauded for use of honest terms in his e-mail update #4 (terms such as "bank" which are not allowed to be said on campus in public). As an employee of the College, I appreciate this latest e-mail. If the Trustees can keep the College going, and do so without any additional layoffs or involuntarily reductions in employee hours, it will be worth listening to them.

collegehill

May 15, 2009 - 12:03 pm EDT

That is great the Trustees gave to keep the college open over the summer, but what about next year or even six months from now? It is but a temporary band aid and doesn't solve the real problem, which is unrealistic budget and revenue expectations, along with a ton of debt. And now that Craven Williams has seemed to lose all credibility with the faculty / staff and there are external questions about his leadership, how is he going to lead the school back from the abyss?

I feel for my friends and neighbors that work at GC. I am also angry that they are afraid to speak out for fear of being fired or laid off. But leadership by fear is not sustainable and the truth will always come out.