GUEST COLUMN:

Students, taxpayers once again robbed by higher education system

Fri, Apr 1, 2022 (2 a.m.)

On Monday, it was publicly revealed that Chancellor Melody Rose of the Nevada System of Higher Education (NSHE) will resign effective today.

Students and faculty were notified of the resignation through the bare minimum requirement — that a public meeting agenda be posted three days prior to an event per Nevada open meeting law. Rose’s decision to leave NSHE concludes a tumultuous 19 months with the Nevada Board of Regents, with over two years remaining on her contract. The result — a $610,000 severance package for Rose.

Large severance packages are the norm at NSHE, and regents have used taxpayer funds and student fees to finance similar packages to other higher education administrators, includingformer Chancellor Dan Klaich in 2016. In total, the golden parachutes provided to each of these individuals cost more than many of the 2023 to 2025 budgetary requests made by our state’s colleges and universities.

It is no secret that the Board of Regents has attracted its fair share of criticism over the years. From heated public comments at meetings to a ballot measure that sought to remove them from the state constitution, the regents have been on the receiving end of skepticism and cynicism for quite some time. Events seem to have reached a crescendo in recent months as a drumbeat of headlines called attention to the latest debacle from the board. Rose alleged hostility and abuse of power from top officers on the board, and although a report distributed internally in February indicated that her claims “did not substantiate” a sex-based hostile work environment and unlawful retaliation, it is clear that the behavior exhibited by these regents generates little else than chaos in Nevada higher education.

While there is, of course, a desire to further postulate on the politics of the situation — as students and staff, we ourselves often get caught in the midst — it’s more important to highlight how much this lump sum of money could instead benefit higher education in Nevada. Here are a few options of what a $610,000 severance package could instead fund:

ν One year of pay for seven or eight new academic faculty members, assuming the current median salary for assistant professors on a nine-month contract at UNLV. This would lead to a reduction in class size, open up more lines for research and funding, and create opportunities to diversify our faculty ranks;

• One year of support for 30 new state-funded graduate assistants at $20,000 each, which is much higher than the average $1,250/month ($11,250/year) master’s students receive for teaching hundreds of students;

• The full restoration of the UNLV School of Dental Medicine’s operating budget to pre-pandemic levels, for $300,000 per fiscal year;

• Around 60,000 at-home COVID tests, which student governments previously purchased for the campus community;

• Fully funded legal assistance for UNLV, CSN, and UNR students seeking immigration services with DACA renewals, naturalization applications and visas. The UNLV Immigration Clinic was granted a $500,000 award to expand its services through, and there are more than 100 students awaiting assistance, with only one paid staff member taking on the entire workload.

We can continue this list with roughly 30 more requests that were made by our respective institutions in early March, but instead we want to dedicate this space to students who will inevitably be left behind because of the overarching political implications of such a move, especially in the months preceding a large fiscal request that NSHE will make during the 2023 legislative session. As one of us has had firsthand experience with workplace harassment and the woefully inadequate Title IX process, we sought solace in Rose, seeing her background in feminist studies, and listening to her empathetic conversations with students. We are dismayed at how quickly some people would turn their backs on the thousands of students who were promised stability and assistance, as well as hundreds of staff and faculty who were promised representation, advocacy, and support. Instead, we are left once again doing it ourselves, for 1/50th of the pay and for double the work.

Our institutions are supposed to be affordable, accessible places that grant Nevadans opportunities for personal growth and success. Yet here we are, sitting ducks on a sinking ship, whose captain has once again left us to drown. Every student deserves the chance to succeed and to have a voice in the powerful spaces that moderate our daily lives — the very spaces that our tuition dollars fund.

We deserve more. As always, we are the ones left to pick up the pieces of a broken system, ever gravitating toward the notion that the only way for us to stay afloat is to rely upon one another.

The worst part? NSHE won’t be throwing us a life jacket anytime soon.

Nicole Thomas, Olivia Cheche, Blanca Peña and Peter Grema are students at UNLV. Thomas serves as the president of the Graduate and Professional Student Association (GPSA), Peña serves as the Senate president for the Consolidated Students of the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (CSUN) undergraduate student government; and Cheche is the former CSUN Senate president. Cheche and Grema are graduating from UNLV this spring.

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