Unfortunately for these professors, protests can’t change the bottom line. The school is struggling financially.

Ashley A. Smith of Inside Higher Ed reports.

Change and Protest

Financial troubles have plagued Roxbury Community College in Boston for years. Now faculty unrest appears to be on the rise.
Faculty and staff at the small two-year college protested against President Valerie Roberson and her administration Thursday on the campus.

“We have a new administration and they have come into the college making draconian changes without regard to what has existed here for 40 years,” said Ruth Kiefson-Roberts, an English professor at the college and president of the faculty’s union chapter. “One of their first acts was to get rid of the entire middle management. Many of them had been here for decades and came up through the ranks. They left the college leaderless.”

After the protest, 65 percent of 130 faculty and staff members voted no confidence in Roberson, Kiefson-Roberts said.
About 30 classes last fall were left without instructors the first week of the semester. Some of the classes were only filled two or three weeks after the start of the school year, she said, adding that adjunct instructors and full-time faculty members were also assigned to classes without taking their expertise into account.

Maximum class sizes were raised to 32 students without consulting with departments, Kiefson-Roberts said. The English for speakers of other languages program was “dismantled” and then reopened as “new and improved,” she said, and some staff members have received the cold shoulder from administrators for complaining about the changes.