© 2024
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations
An update has been released for the Android version of the WAMC App that addresses performance issues. Please check the Google Play Store to download and update to the latest version.

MSMC Students, Staff Protest Professors' Termination

WAMC, Allison Dunne

More than 150 students and staff at Newburgh’s Mount Saint Mary College gathered Wednesday to protest the termination of two professors. They say freedom of expression is at stake as Catholic policies encroach. The Board of Trustees chair disagrees.

The decisions not to retain two professors at Mount Saint Mary College have prompted what’s believed to be the first large-scale protest on campus since a student demonstration following the 1970 Kent State shootings. Now, more than 40 years later, Mount Saint Mary students and staff took to the lawn outside the Dominican Center overlooking the Hudson River to protest the Board of Trustees decision not to renew two professors’ contracts – those of Dr. Andrew Weiss, chair of the School of Business, who did not attend the protest, and Assistant Professor of Economics Erin Crockett, who says she learned of the decision last week.

“The only explanation I’ve been given is that I did not, that I, quote ‘did not satisfy the requirements for reappointment,’” says Crockett. “That was the only explanation that was given to the vice president of academic affairs, even.”

Speaking Thursday afternoon, Crockett says the Promotion and Tenure Committee recommended both her and Weiss for reappointment. Jane Hanley is spokeswoman for the college.

“As regards specifics about the two, we really can’t comment on personnel matters,” says Hanley. “But just that the issue at hand is one of shared governance and responsibility and also, let’s say, the final word, the decision maker being between faculty and Board of Trustees.”

Board of Trustees Chair Dr. Albert Gruner issued a letter dated April 1 to members of the college community, noting it is the responsibility of the Promotion and Tenure Committee to make recommendations and the responsibility of the Board to make the final decisions. He also writes that some have suggested that academic freedom was an issue. He says there is no basis for such a claim. Nicholas Casiano is a freshman and one of the protest’s organizers.

“I think it was politically motivated,” says Casiano. “Dr. Erin Crockett has been a vocal dissident to the college’s new policies, many of which have tried to be very right-wing policies moving the college in a more conservative direction.”

That direction includes reinstituting same-sex dormitories on campus. Again, Hanley.

“The dorms had changed over to be co-ed in ’08, in 2008. And then this summer there had been a change where they were going back to single-sex dormitories,” says Hanley. “But really that was in response largely to a national conversation on sexual assault and making healthy decisions, helping freshmen, things like that.”

The college is a private institution, founded in 1959 by Dominican Sisters. Hanley says it does not accept religious funding but is Catholic affiliated. And while religion classes are not required for the core curriculum at the moment, Crockett says that will change.

“In the School of Business, we require, three either philosophy or religion classes. One of them must be logic or intro to philosophy. One of them must be business ethics for us and then the third you could take either religion or philosophy,” says Crockett. “But I believe starting next year, that third class must be religion.”

Credit WAMC, Allison Dunne
Erin Crockett

In support of Weiss and Crockett, students have launched a petition on change.org, so far securing 1,081 signatures. And some faculty members have written comments railing against the decisions. Again, Casiano.

“This is a spit in the face to students,” says Casiano. “And we will continue to push back against these policies.”

Junior Joseph Ianniello also helped organize the protest.

“A lot of students on this campus more and more are afraid to not only express who they are but how they feel,” says Ianiello. “Freedom of speech is really dying on this campus. It’s really sad.”

Again, Crockett.

This is not a campus that protests. This is, and it’s not a faculty that protests. It’s a very polite faculty. It’s a very moderate faculty. It’s a very reasonable student body,” says Crockett. “And so I think the fact that we had so many people come together today just shows that we have been pushed too far.”

Hanley says it is not known whether over the next several days Mount Saint Mary President Dr. Anne Carson Daly will publicly respond to the matter. Meanwhile, protestors allege the contract decisions are not the first assaults on freedom of expression. Professor James Phillips has been granted tenure, but with a warning, after he used lyrics to rap artist Snoop Dogg’s “Gin & Juice,” during a student coffeehouse performance last year.

Related Content