After the layoffs of 30 staff members at Emerson College in August, Emerson IT employee Steve Bohrer took a walk on the beach with his wife, former Emerson employee Estelle Ticktin. The two were seeking reprieve amid the chaos of his department going into overdrive from losing employees. On the phone with The Beacon four days later, he recalled the moment in August when he found out that one of his coworkers would not be with the college come fall.
“She was a friend. We rode the train together sometimes, and then she was just gone,” Bohrer said. “People are just disappeared.”
In August, Emerson College laid off 30 staff members due to “budget reductions,” which they attributed to falling revenue and declining enrollment for the second year in a row.
Additionally, full-time faculty have the option to participate in a “voluntary separation incentive program.” The program, also referred to as “VSIP,” was created with the aim of reducing the number of full-time faculty. It is an incentive-based program designed to encourage full-time faculty to voluntarily leave the college. Those who choose to leave will receive benefits like extended healthcare coverage, severance, and a lump sum of cash based on how long the faculty member has worked for the college.
In an email sent by the full-time faculty union on August 21, a newsletter stated that “while there is no official target, it can be assumed that a reduction of approximately 5% to 10%,” or 15 to 20 full-time faculty members, “is desired as it aligns with a college-wide target.” The original application deadline was Sept. 15, which has now been extended to Sept. 23 due to a request from the union, according to the college.
The newsletter then goes on to say that they “honestly don’t know” what would happen if not enough faculty apply. In an email statement to The Beacon sent on Sept. 10, a college spokesperson said, “We will reassess our budget reduction options based on final enrollment numbers.”
According to Bohrer, the layoffs of friends and colleagues has left the remaining staff and faculty “on edge,” as it appears “[the administration] is winging it as they go.”
“It’s not a great morale builder. But there’s no great way to do layoffs,” he said.
The layoffs, which one staff member referred to as “the purge,” spanned across two weeks at the beginning of August, and came with “little explanation or notice,” according to another staff member. Neither staff member wanted to be named for fear of retribution.
The layoffs resulted in a 5% reduction in staff across several departments, including IT, admissions, and marketing. According to the college, the 30 staff members were three staffers in the library, three of eight instructional technologists, an assistant supervisor of the costume shop, and one of four staff members in the Writing and Academic Resource Center.
“It’s hard for it to not feel like management was looking at a chart and picking names, without thinking about how this is going to impact students,” Bohrer said.
In a press release sent by the Emerson Staff Union on August 20, the departments affected are referred to as “student-facing services”—those that often have a heavy hand in improving accessibility for students with disabilities and learning differences.
Illona Yosefov, a staff member of the Instructional Technology Group (ITG) for ten years and the vice chair of the staff union, expressed concern about how the layoffs will impact day to day operations of ITG and student accessibility.
“Content is accessible because we make it so,” said Yosefov. “[The layoffs are] a big hit on accessibility because we don’t have another department on campus that does this.”
Yosefov said most of the work for the fall semester was done over the summer before the layoffs took place. She said the responsibilities of ITG staffers include developing online courses, training faculty to make their academic content accessible, and troubleshooting systems used by faculty, like Canvas and Panopto.
“People who support students who need some extra help, ‘yeah, they’re not important,’ that’s the sort of message we’re sending,” Bohrer said when asked about the impact on student accessibility.
Daniel Crocker, coordinator of electronic resources since 2008 and chair of the staff union, said the layoffs have “dramatically” affected operations for the fall.
Crocker explained that the responsibilities of those in the library go far beyond troubleshooting student queries and qualms—there are people responsible for processing archival collections and acquisitions, including those donated from notable alumni like Henry Winkler. Some of the staff laid off were the ones working on these assignments. Now, it’s uncertain whether they’ll be completed.
“It is harder to process those requests quickly,” said Crocker. “We are under threat of missing deadlines, and it is stressful for the remaining staff.”
Two weeks after the layoffs, in an email sent to Provost Alexandra Socarides, the staff union requested four of the 30 staff laid off to be reinstated—one instructional technologist, an instructional designer, an archivist, and a costume shop supervisor.
“Some of these roles are crucial for maintaining student enrollment at Emerson and ensuring the college’s compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA),” the email obtained by The Beacon said.
The provost replied, “The College always prioritizes the needs of our students and I assure you that their current and future success is paramount in decisions we make, no matter how difficult those decisions may be.” She then went on to say that all future communication regarding layoffs should be directed to the Human Resources department.
Shortly thereafter, the staff union met with HR to make their plea to reinstate the four staffers. Yosefov said they appeared “receptive” to the idea.
“We’re hoping that they’ll hear us,” she said. For now, the union is still waiting on a definite answer.
Unionized staff members who were laid off were given a 60-day notice, during which they were instructed to continue working remotely to hand things off to their supervisors. However, they were told they “may not send any internal/external communications or announcements regarding the status of [their] department or its programming/work,” according to an email sent to the affected employees and obtained by The Beacon. Failure to do so, the email went on to say, “could result in significant operational disruptions and will lead to disciplinary action, up to and including your termination prior to the completion of your notice period.”
Ticktin, Bohrer’s wife, was a former administrative associate to the chair of the Communication Sciences and Disorders department before voluntarily departing the college for early retirement incentives offered amid layoffs last summer. In a statement sent by the college, a spokesperson wrote in a Sept. 11 statement to the Beacon, “This was a one-time 2024 staff Voluntary Early Retirement Incentive Program (VERIP). [ This is Distinct from the 2024 Faculty VERIP and 2025 faculty VSIP].”
According to John Rodzvilla, WLP professor and full-time faculty union president, the VSIP program was created with the same intentions of early retirement or other voluntary separation—to incentivize full-time faculty to leave to help with budget cuts—but with the new program, more than just folks of retirement age are eligible in an effort to cast a wider net.
“Voluntary separation is not tied to retirement…in effect, it offers more faculty the opportunity [to separate],” he said.
In an attempt to mitigate the layoffs, the union said that they approached upper management to negotiate a deal to “[redirect] our members’ retirement matching contributions to roll back layoffs,” according to the staff union’s Aug. 20 press release.
Determined to meet their target reduction, the college is open to implementing other methods.
“It is possible [the College] may seek to reduce the faculty size through other mechanisms as outlined in our CBA,” the newsletter in the Aug. 21 full-time faculty union email said.
The CBA, or collective bargaining agreement, is an agreement the union has with the college to protect faculty members from things like layoffs and budget cuts. In Section 9, the CBA outlines the few reasons why the college can terminate a faculty member’s position—”extreme cases of health issues…discontinuance of an education program or department, financial exigency, or just cause for issues of discipline.”
Financial exigency, as defined by Section 9.3, refers to a “bona fide financial crisis” that “threatens the survival of the College as a whole.”
The section continues, “Before the College terminates a Represented Faculty Member under this Section, the College shall make every effort to place the affected Represented Faculty Member in a similar position at the College at the same rank and salary.”
Rodzvilla attributed the fraught financial situation of the college to many things, including what researchers are calling “the demographic cliff”—or a sharp drop in population of 18-year-olds, resulting in a steep decline in enrollment.
While enrollment numbers have not been made public yet, the college’s Chief Financial Officer reported a projected decline in revenue of $16.5 million in housing and tuition revenue for the fiscal 2025 year in the Faculty Institute last Tuesday, Sept. 2, according to someone present at the meeting. The Institute is an exclusive, confidential meeting that occurs every year wherein only full-time faculty may attend. A presentation is given by the Provost and the President to discuss admissions and enrollments. The college confirmed this in its Sept. 10 email statement, saying “these were preliminary numbers and may change after auditing.”
“This college is so student dependent, that if there’s not enough students enrolling into the college, it’s going to have a massive impact,” Rodzvilla said. “If there’s a deficit, it’s most likely through enrollment.”
Others, like Barry Marshall, senior VMA professor and president of the affiliated faculty union, attribute the drop in enrollment to other issues, including alleged antisemitism causing Jewish students to transfer.
“There’s a fundamental disingenuous attitude about the whole thing, from students and staff,” he said of the fervor shown by students and staff during the four day encampment for Palestine that ended with the arrest of 118 protesters. Students, faculty, and staff alike set up camp in the 2B alley to protest the Emerson administration’s ties to Israel, and to call for a divestment.
Though Marshall said he “would have liked to see upper management take a pay cut,” he acknowledged the positive impact of other changes Bernhardt’s administration has made, like giving up raises this year, the VSIP program (“[Affiliated] would have more classes,”) and the creation of the School of Film, Television, and Media Arts.
“I’m excited he provided us [with] a mechanism to make [VMA] a school,” he said. “That’s going to save Emerson.”
In the announcement, written by President Jay Bernhardt, it was stated that the highest-paid executives and administrators, who “[make] up 10% of [Emerson’s] non-union professional staff,” will not receive salary increases in 2026.
Marshall noted that affiliated faculty suffered more from last year’s budget cuts, with 20-25 members losing a class, and some only having two to begin with. Despite this, he is optimistic that they won’t be “suffering the brunt” this year.
“Both full-time and affiliated faculty got the best contracts we’ve ever had with Jay in charge,” he said.
Marshall and Rodzvilla both echoed concerns about the challenges higher education institutions have been facing under the Trump administration, including visa revocations and federal investigations threatening funding—both of which have affected Emerson in the last academic year.
“It’s a mess. It’s scary what’s happening on the national level,” Rodzvilla said. “This is not an Emerson problem. This is a national problem.”
However, some feel that more could have been done to avoid not only the fact that layoffs happened, but also the manner in which they were done. Bohrer called them “ad hoc.” Ticktin said they point to a greater cultural problem in the administration.
“You used to be able to go up to his [The President’s] floor. .. now they’ve got that floor closed off, the door is locked, and he’s been less and less available for the community,” she said, noting how “siloed” Bernhardt appears.
“One of the big criticisms is that staff isn’t integrated enough into decision making,” said Ticktin.
Kim Costigan, the treasurer of the staff union, wrote in a statement to The Beacon, “I want it known that we offered to reduce our retirement contributions to save staff but it was rejected and instead we got an email announcing new VPs whose salaries most likely equal the amount of the four jobs we feel actually help retain students.”[Ed. note: See below for statement from the college on this issue],
Costigan’s statement concluded, “Why aren’t they talking to staff or reading the staffing report—we have useful ideas that can help the college not only survive but grow.”
The individuals interviewed for this story do not speak on behalf of their departments or unions. The opinions expressed in this piece are entirely their own.
Ed. note: This story has been edited post-publication with updated details about the VSIP and a college response to claims made by union members.
In a Sept. 11 email statement to the Beacon the college responded to the publication of Costigan’s statement, saying, “This idea was rejected because, among other things, it would have caused compliance problems and significant costs with the plan, would have required months of lead time, and any global changes to the plan would have required complicated negotiations with multiple unions.”
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