The new school year’s just started, the budget cutting never stopped.
The College closed its Office of Sexual Assault Prevention and Response for the month of July, and administrators combined the Office of Residential Life and Office of Student Life and Activities into a single office while downsizing staff. The Derek Bok Center for Teaching and Learning, which gives advice to faculty and teaching fellows, is also struggling after a 40 percent budget cut and a halving of its staff.
Students in Cambridge over the summer also faced reduced services, as administrators trimmed hours for the Bureau of Study Counsel and the Office of Alcohol and Other Drug Services.
But perhaps most notably, the University announced only a few weeks into the summer a series of long-anticipated layoffs, cutting 275 jobs and offering reduced or changed work hours for roughly 40 others. Half the positions were professional or administrative jobs, and the rest were clerical and technical jobs.
Find out what else you’ve missed in rainy Cambridge over the summer after the jump.
The cuts hit schools across the University, including the Kennedy School, the Business School, and the Law School. The Medical School also eliminated roughly 17 staff positions, and four staff members were given reduced schedules. The Faculty of Arts and Sciences, which includes the College and is Harvard’s largest school, laid off 77 staffers and cut work hours for 15 others.
All this came after Harvard announced that 531 staff members had participated in the University’s Voluntary Early Retirement Incentive Program.
Further budget cuts loom at FAS, which is still scrambling to close the $143 million deficit that remains after the cuts. Harvard College Library, which runs the popular Lamont, Cabot Science, and Widener Libraries, cut over 20 staffers and restricted circulation at its Fung Library.
Even though activists, staff, and students had protested loudly after janitorial layoffs last year, subcontracted cleaning jobs continued to see cuts across the University as well. The Faculty of Arts and Sciences reduced work hours for over 100 janitors, a move that drew heated union criticism.
Students and faculty at the Medical School began circulating a petition after administrators cut funding for the already-unglamorous Primary Care Division, and Harvard University Press laid off seven employees and closed its 61-year-old display room in the Holyoke Center due to sagging sales figures.