The Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts Faculty Association strongly opposed school President James F. Birge before his appointment in late 2015, saying he was "not a candidate the faculty would welcome as the new president at MCLA."
The Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts Faculty Association strongly opposed James F. Birge before his appointment as school president in late 2015, saying he was "not a candidate the faculty would welcome."
Following the controversial firing of school administrator Mary F. Hastings just weeks after the North Adams school had hired her, documents provided to MassLive detail early doubts and continuing tumult between staff and the North Adams state school's new president.
Based on interviews with both current and former faculty as well as several current and former members of the school's Board of Trustees, it appears likely the 91-person MCLA Faculty Association will cast a vote of no confidence on Birge prior to his inauguration in April of next year -- a gala the school plans to spend roughly $30,000 in bringing to life.
Interviewees say college fundraising revenue and fundraising are down, realities Birge has responded to by cutting budgets and staff rather than seeking out new revenue.
"The money situation is bad," said one member of the faculty, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. "Our own version of the stock market crash has occurred."
In a September Board of Trustees meeting, MCLA Vice President of Administration and Finance Lawrence R. Behan presented a fiscal 2017 budget proposal that included a $1 million transfer from the school's reserves. Birge pointed to cuts in state funding to explain the need for the transfer at the meeting.
In fiscal 2016, MCLA's tuition revenue was down $1 million -- $17.04 million, down from $18.04 million in fiscal 2015 but still in excess of the school's fiscal 2014 revenue of $16.9 million, according to a college audit. A total operating revenue of $25.5 million in fiscal 2016 was at the 2014 level, but down more than half-a-million from 2015.
Meanwhile, the college has responded to a collective bargaining shortfall between fiscal 2016 and 2017 by increasing fees.
Nine percent of MCLA alumni give back to the school -- a fairly average figure for state schools, but lower than private liberal arts schools, according to 2014 data. Forty percent of MCLA students' families earn less than $40,000 per year and 46 percent receive federal Pell grants.
Recent alumni events featuring Birge on Nov. 10 in Troy, N.Y., and Dec. 9 in Boston were very poorly attended. Faculty sources said only 5 alumni went to the Troy gathering, and 40 went to the one in Boston -- half of last year's attendence.
Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts official claims she was fired for refusing to fire coworkers
A second administrator, Charles Kimberling, former MCLA director of facilities, told MassLive he quit the college after five years of service when his superior started telling him to fire staff.
His account very much resembled Hastings', the school's Vice President for Institutional Advancement for a brief 10 1/2 weeks, who said she was fired by Birge and Executive Vice President Denise Richardello for refusing to fire five coworkers.
Kimberling said in five years there had been no talk of firing employees. Then Birge took the helm. Soon, downsizing staff became a fixture of Kimberling's superior, Lawrence Behan, the school's vice president of administration and finance.
"All of a sudden we were running down the list, 'Do we need to fire this person? That person?'" Kimberling told MassLive.
Employees started quietly disappearing, Kimberling said.
"I would find out about people being gone when they wouldn't answer an email," he said.
Kimberling fired one of his staff, but requests to fire more kept coming, prompting his resignation.
"I had every intention of retiring from MCLA," he said.
Birge, successor to MCLA President Mary Grant, who served from 2002 to 2014, earned a reputation as a budget and program cutter during a six-year stint as president of Franklin Pierce University in Rindge, N.H.
On Nov. 23, 2015 -- before the Board of Trustees hired Birge as president -- MCLA Faculty Association President Graziana Ramsden questioned Birge's history and decried the "absence of flexibility in his bureaucratic leadership style" in a message to the Board of Trustees written on college letterhead.
"While his publicity emphasizes positive accomplishments, it omits the trail of reported failures that have characterized his latest career years," Ramsden wrote in the letter. "We cannot risk placing our hard-earned reputation and excellent standing in the hands of a career administrator who has never stepped into a class to teach, and who is incapable of articulating the liberal arts values beyond the perfunctory."
Of the four candidates, Birge was the faculty's last choice, the letter states.
Ramsden continued, "In his open meeting with us, Dr. Birge failed to convey an understanding of the liberal arts education that went beyond a blurry conflation with general education requirements, perhaps because -- most dauntingly for us -- he has never taught a college class. His communication skills were very good, but they could hardly masquerade the lack of content in his answers."
She added, "He was unable to answer questions of diversity, and we believe he would be equally unable to tackle social justice issues that already exist on this campus."
The Board of Trustees ultimately voted 8-2 in favor of hiring Birge over the other three candidates, including Alan Ray, a former president of Elmhurst College in Illinois -- the applicant favored by Ramsden in her letter.
Kimberling said the hiring was "kind of a sham" and all the staff he spoke to preferred Ray.
"We didn't feel we were part of the (hiring) process at all," he said.
Last week, Tyler Fairbank, CEO of the Fairbank Group and chairman of the MCLA Board of Trustees that hired Birge, said he and the other Trustees read Ramsden's letter at the time and took it into consideration, along with much else.
"The board put so much thought into making the right decision," Fairbank said. "We were extremely confident in Dr. Birge and continue to feel the same way."
He added, "With so many people participating in a transparent process, there's always going to be people with different views."
One of the differing views among the Board of Trustees was that of Shirley Edgerton, who voted against Birge and has since vacated her seat.
Edgerton preferred Ray -- who is of Native-American heritage -- for his "cultural competence," according to a Dec. 10 iberkshires.com report.
"It's one thing to recruit first-generation students or students from communities of color as well as students from under-resourced households," Edgerton said, according to reporter Tammy Daniels. "It is another thing to successfully retain them. In this educational climate we're living, having a president with those abilities would continue to prepare us for this phenomenon."
A recent post-Election Day communique to the campus from Birge read, "while many people did not support Mr. Trump's candidacy, it is the case, and it has always been the case, that multiple voices and perspectives on American life can and should be allowed to emerge."
A response by Professor of Social Work and Women's Studies Michele Ethier, which a source provided to MassLive, highlights the tensions between Birge and some faculty, particularly regarding culture.
"I am certainly not opposed to 'one community with multiple voices,'" Ethier wrote. "What I am opposed to is your intonation, intimation and insinuation that we should just shake hands, get along and get over it. Perhaps I wouldn't have a negative reaction to your memo if I hadn't also attended a meeting earlier in the semester where you stated, 'We need to work together to mitigate student protest.'"
She added, "With all due respect, I am not interested in mitigating protest. I am not interested in keeping students juvenile or preventing them from becoming an organized political force. I am interested in fostering struggles for human rights -- particularly rights for women, people of color and queer people. Conflict in a 'free' society got us out of Vietnam, got women the vote, got the Civil Rights Act passed in 1964, and is moving to get marriage equality for queer people. Telling us to just get along and move on is not presidential, but it is paternalistic."
Hastings, who remains in touch with former colleagues at the school, said she also thinks the faculty may cast a no-confidence vote on Birge.
"There's talk of getting him out before the inauguration," Hastings said.
Faculty complained to MassLive about an administration decision to cut $24,000 from the academic departments budget -- funds used to purchase classroom supplies, field trips and much more -- and use the sum to hire a strategic planning consultant who they contend has done little.
Though MCLA initially said Hastings left to "explore other opportunities," Birge eventually admitted to firing her in a letter to the MCLA Beacon, saying she cursed on the job and provided inadequate leadership.
The school contacted unemployment to shut down Hastings' benefits, saying she was warned about her conduct prior to her termination.
Hastings said she never received a warning, and was preparing to go to court against the school on Monday, three of her former colleagues were prepared to testify on her behalf.
Located in the downtown in the area of Church Street, MCLA had an enrollment of 1,816 undergraduate students and 457 graduate students in 2015.
MassLive contacted school leadership following the allegations against Birge. Director of Marketing and Communications Bernadette G. Alden said neither she nor Birge wanted to comment on the story. Birge declined a request for an interview at the college.
No-confidence votes can prove damaging to college presidents, but do not necessarily result in the subject's departure, according to Inside Higher Ed.
The Harvard University Governing Board in 2005 ousted school President Lawrence Summers after the faculty voted no confidence in him. Some credit the faculty vote for spurring the governing board's decision.
But Inside Higher Ed in 2013 noticed an uptick in no confidence votes but a decline in their influence, though it could point to no data backing up the trend.
"No group keeps a national record of no-confidence votes in higher education, so there is no way to know for sure whether they are on the rise," Kevin Kiley wrote on the website. "Faculty leaders might encourage such votes because they feel like they have been shut out of other formal decision-making processes."
He added, "The main power of no-confidence votes is the power to shift opinion, either that of the institution's governing board or the general public."
