Letter to the Editor by Lisa Martino-Taylor, Ph.D.
Dear Editor,
In Spring 2016, an unsettling exchange took place at an STLCC Board of Trustees meeting regarding a barrage of major policy changes soon to be instituted by administrators with no real desire for faculty or student input. A consultant advised Jeff Pittman to “burn the ships”, suggesting that he do it fast enough so no one could resist. Pittman smirked in agreement.
“Burn the ships” is a term used when troops land in foreign territory and are ordered by their commanding officer to burn their own ships, forcing them to either conquer inhabitants or die. In our case the inhabitants are students, staff, faculty, and members of the community.
Pittman’s cruel slash-and-burn lay-off of 58 faculty during final exam week was presented as an unfortunate but necessary result of financial woes. As of April 2017, however, STLCC had nearly $117 million in reserve funds and had secured $40 million for a new building. State funding was later restored; however, some of our best and brightest were thrown overboard when the chancellor traded outstanding faculty for mortar. STLCC has lost its moorings under a heavy-handed chancellor, becoming stunningly dysfunctional and administrator-centric, a shadow of the former institution known for excellent instruction and faculty mentorship of students.
STLCC’s values have shifted dramatically under a peculiar ideology hostile to the community college mission of providing quality education for working class and lower-income students. Instead we are shifting to pre-fabricated online courses with less rigor and questionable transfer preparedness; a paternalistic approach to students that reduces their choice of programs, classes, and opportunities; the purposeful erasing of institutional memory; and blatant hostility (including outright physical assault) toward faculty members who have been one of few stable elements of this institution. Even before layoffs, STLCC had become a toxic environment where a culture of intimidation was cultivated.
Students deserve more than to be pushed into inferior online courses that are replicated like a bad virus and that will lack instructors credentialed in that discipline. An increasingly exploited part-time faculty, along with online classes, deny students important faculty mentoring that opens doors and quite literally connects students to their future. When we deny students the autonomy to choose educational process and objectives at their own institution, we have lost our way. When students must shout to be heard and then are threatened for attempting to shape the very institution of which they should be central, we have lost our way. When we blindly focus on policy at the detriment of basic human decency and freedoms, or we sit silently when instructors are thrown to the ground for pointing out policy non-compliance, we have lost our way. When we turn a blind eye to a culture of intimidation, we have lost our way. The famous Milgram and Asch experiments reveal how decent people willingly conform to warped and harmful group norms. Groupthink dynamics show how good people become complicit in terrible events as evidenced throughout world history. STLCC has become a case study in institutional deviance and groupthink as the ships burn.
I am electing to leave an institution that I once loved. I thank my colleagues and students who fought for the integrity of this institution. My message to students is as follows: You are amazing and I will miss you all. This is your college and your education. You should never become subordinate to an institution that does not recognize your humanity. Demand that your education works for you and not the opposite.
Lisa Martino-Taylor, Ph.D.
Global Studies Program Coordinator
Associate Professor of Sociology
St. Louis Community College—Meramec
