IMPORTANT NOTE: THIS PETITION IS FROM NOVEMBER. IF YOU ARE STILL AGAINST THE FURLOUGHS FOR SPRING BREAK, PLEASE SIGN THIS NEW PETITION INSTEAD: http://chng.it/sfkZNF2gm2. Thank you for your continued support.

To President Keenan and the Board of Trustees, 

The students at Salem State University are demanding that you immediately rescind the three weeks of faculty furlough planned for Spring 2021 at all levels and in all departments. We are also standing in solidarity with members of the administrative and maintenance unions and demanding the cancellation of planned furloughs for those workers in FY2021. Though we recognize that the University, like many other institutions, is facing a difficult financial moment, it is unacceptable to ask students and workers to bear the burden of budget shortfalls, especially in a year already marked by distance, low contact, and personal and academic struggle. 

We are already experiencing the squeeze of distance learning in the 2020-2021 academic year. It has been incredibly difficult to engage with our classes, to connect with our professors and classmates, to stay motivated and focused, to serve at unpaid internships, and to adjust to the loss of campus life. We have seen our professors struggling just as we are struggling, and we have felt and witnessed how much work they are putting in to give us a semblance of the relationship-based, face-to-face experience necessary to do good social work. 

These challenges are the result of COVID-19, and are not the fault of the University, but it is astounding that the University does not seem to understand that what we need now is more connection with our professors, more availability, not less. It is even more astounding that the University is calling for these furloughs even though the state of Massachusetts has funded higher education at the typical level for FY21. In other words: the state is still paying its bills. Students are still paying our bills. But now, because of a fiscal situation that is far beyond our control, students are being thrown under the bus. 

President Keenan has called these furloughs a matter of equity and “shared suffering,” but the fact is that there is nothing equitable about taking away three weeks of help, contact, support, and educational planning. By cutting off access to professors during “break periods” -- periods where many students aren’t taking a break, but are working on midterms, finals, fellowship applications, fieldwork, or classwork -- furloughs will disproportionately harm first generation students, low-income students, and students with learning disabilities, who are already struggling with the profound lack of human contact during this pandemic. Furloughs serve only to exacerbate these difficulties and inequities: how can we be expected to improve without the guidance of our esteemed faculty? In addition, we know that our professors need every moment of planning time that they can get, which means they have two choices with furlough: don’t work, and weaken the quality of their students’ experiences, or work for free, and be exploited by the University. 

Salem State’s mission and vision claims that the University “puts students first,” and is “committed to student success” and a culture of “accountability and collaboration.” These furloughs are the opposite: they prioritize bottom lines over student needs, and they were planned without student input. Salem State increased fees for the 2020-2021 school year, despite pushback from students, faculty, and staff. Many students were already paying tens of thousands of dollars out of pocket every year for their education, while working and completing internships. The COVID epidemic has exacerbated the financial crisis for students. All of us are racking up debt paying standard tuition rates when we can’t access classrooms, libraries, or one another. Now, having paid more than we can afford for less than what we would usually get, the University has made a unilateral decision that we will get even less. To make matters worse, the University has not made us aware that this is happening; instead, we had to learn about it in The Salem News. This decision was made behind our backs and against our wishes, but the University would have us believe that it was made in our names and with our best interests at hearts. We know that it was not.

Our country’s public institutions are in a fiscal, political, and relational crisis. These furloughs are a concession to that crisis, a shrugging of the shoulders, an insistence that the way out is to do more with less. But as students, we are already doing more than anyone should have to do, including writing this petition: what a state we are in that students need to demand that a University allow us to talk to our professors! Imagine instead if, in a time of crisis, the University was brave enough to realize that a corporate approach to education is inadequate? Imagine if President Keenan and the Board of Trustees used their power to stand in solidarity with us, demanding the federal and state funding that high quality public education truly requires?

Salem State University is not made of ledgers and fiscal statements. Salem State University is made of people -- faculty, administrators, and staff alike -- who work with their minds and their hands and their hearts to bring a new world into being. These planned furloughs resist the new world in favor of the old, and are evidence of a shortsightedness that threatens not only this academic year, but the future of Salem State. The University must have an open, honest, truly accountable conversation about where these deficits came from, and how they can be closed without furloughing, firing, or otherwise harming the workers who make Salem State what it is.

As students, alumni, employees, and members of the public who value higher education, we sign this letter to unequivocally reject these furloughs, and we demand that the University rescind them immediately. 

**The majority of this petition has been based on the Social Work Solidarity Against Furloughs Letter and adapted with permission from the authors