One Faculty member wrote the following this week to a group of faculty trying to find hope:
I suffer low morale because my students are suffering and hopeless and I am sometimes the only grown - up in their life they can turn to. This quarter alone I've had one student whose father was deported, two students disclose sexual assault, several student s dealing with food and housing insecurity, multiple students dealing with inefficiency and hostility from housing, and Financial Aid, Title IX, and campus employers…. There have been so many cuts to mental health, and advising, and housing, and the administration is increasingly cloistered and inaccessible. So the students come to me. And they're in my office sobbing. And not only do I have to be sympathetic, and reassuring, and helpful, I have to be hopeful for them. Even as I'm not feeling especially hopeful myself. That's why I'm demoralized. Because I have to teach, and grade, and reassure, and coach, and inspire, and therapize, and problem -solve, and worry. And then I hear the President talk about me like I'm not doing enough for the University. The weight of all that is persistent and crushing. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Update, afternoon of March 19. It was infuriating today to see the administration trying to promote the idea that they are attuned to student problems. In a Central Today article released on the eve of the Board Meeting, CWU’s Media team wrote an article about the Wildcat Pantry (twice using the phrase “out of the President’s Division”). While the article’s description of what’s available in the Pantry does not match what our students report to us (they are grateful for anything, but report lots of beans an d peanut butter), we wondered if the article represented a genuine change toward concern about student needs. With hope, one of our colleagues walked by the Black Hall arm of the Wildcat Pantry this afternoon. They found two bags of open hard candy, some squishy potatoes, and an empty fridge. The pictures represent the reality on campus. We worry that the staged pictures and performative concern are all the Board has been allowed to see.
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