Firing demonstrates Earlham’s hypocrisy
By Matthew Cunningham-Cook
There is a tendency within the domain of this hallowed institution for its most privileged members to engage in citational, self-laudatory oratory. We tend to discuss the manner in which Earlham students act and should act, how Earlham breeds a certain kind of “globally competent” student that “engages with a changing world.”
These tendencies manifest themselves in the way that Earlham is portrayed in such discourses: Earlham is an institution committed to the Quaker consensus process, a learning community that seeks to tackle the world’s fundamental problems.
For the most part, these selflaudatory tendencies are not stopped by uncomfortable facts or critiques. Any questioning of whether or not these slogans are implicit with a certain type of colonial discourse is pushed to the side, any empirical evidence that contradicts, in that annoying sort of way, the notion of Earlham as an institution that values all those who are part of it is willfully ignored.
I hope to counteract some of this willful ignorance with this column, by helping those among us who can share a more complicated side to the story.
On Tuesday, February 16 of this year, James L. Pollitt, a maintenance employee at Earlham, 52 years old, a father and a grandfather, was the victim of a hit-and-run car accident that totaled his car.
James was bruised and needed to call the insurance company and the police and generally deal with the physical and legal implications of what happened. James told me that he hadn’t missed a day of work since the beginning of the fiscal year, so he thought that his supervisors would be all right with him taking a couple of days off work to recover.
In 15 years, James hadn’t received a single negative job evaluation or formal reprimand, so he thought that his employment with the college was fairly safe.
Despite the recent hysteria over Earlham’s budget, James assumed that Earlham would take care of its own. After all, people who contribute so much to the college should expect some measure of loyalty in return, right?
On Friday, February 19, James was fired on the spot for “intermittent attendance.” Even after 15 years, there was neither notice nor severance pay.
James appealed the decision to Dick Smith, Earlham’s vice president for financial affairs, and three weeks later his appeal was flatly denied.
Another, younger and cheaper, maintenance employee was hired in James’ place. Earlham as an institution is obviously not subject to the same kind of disciplinary processes as the students are — appeals are the domain of the bureaucratic sovereign, not a consensus-operated committee.
I asked our president about the situation with James, and he declined to comment. I asked if he thought a worker could get a fair deal in Indiana, since it is legal for employers to fire non-contracted, non-union employees on the spot (as a right-to-work state). Furthermore, the combination of deficient legal aid resources and anti-labor judges make it difficult for wrongly fired workers to be heard in court.
Doug answered that a response to that question is “very complicated” and would “take hours.” It must be nice to make $250,000 per year.
While James’ story is certainly the most grievous example of Earlham throwing away their employees like pieces of trash, James told me that the general climate of Earlham employees is one of fear. Many of James’ former co-workers called him to say they disagreed with the decision to fire him, but were too scared for their own jobs to stand up.
Of course, in a city with 16 percent BLS unemployment, that fear is entirely legitimate.
A faculty member told me that at a faculty meeting a few years ago, a tenured faculty member argued that untenured faculty operates in a climate of fear regarding what they can and cannot criticize about Earlham’s operations. The President responded that if anybody was afraid, they should talk to him.
This scene demonstrates the manner in which Earlham’s dominant ideology attempts to wipe away class difference. Despite the fact that our society is one of the most economically unequal on the planet, some continue to argue that we all come to the table with the same amount of ability to speak what we believe.
We engage in this discourse all the time at Earlham, we argue that we can solve problems solely through talking and diplomacy, not through fundamentally addressing the oppression that constructs our world.
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.
