In a recent Town Hall meeting, Seattle University President Eduardo Peñalver confirmed that the university would be implementing a pause in hiring in order to address the financial shortfalls the university is experiencing. According to data presented at the Town Hall, Seattle U is projecting a financial deficit of over $7.5 million for the current year, forcing major changes to be made to the budget.
According to Vice President and Chief Financial Officer Chris Malins, this decision was made primarily to address financial struggles caused by issues with the FAFSA rollout last year as well as visa-related challenges faced by international students. He clarified, however, that this decision is less of a “hiring freeze or pause,” and rather a “selective slowdown in filling certain positions as they become vacant due to natural attrition.” What this means for most departments is that when a staff member retires or leaves, their position will not be re-filled unless considered essential.
“Positions that have a direct impact on the student experience and student success are being filled as soon as they become vacant,” Malins stated in an email to The Spectator, stressing that the university is pursuing options that have the least effect on students.
However, this decision is already proving to have negative impacts on campus.
One department that has been hit particularly hard by the pause is the university’s athletics broadcasting team. The athletics broadcasting team works to stream all Seattle U sports on ESPN+ to viewers around the country. Until this year, the team had been working under the training and supervision of former Director of Video Production Jay Divine.
“Our boss pretty much sent out an email around August saying that he will be leaving,” Takuto Chen, a fourth-year finance major and student employee in broadcasting, said. “He got a new job at UW. So he said that he’d be with us for the first three weeks or maybe a month when we get back on campus and start broadcasting games again.”
Chen and the rest of the team were originally told that the university was looking to hire a new director. However, at the end of October, they were informed that there were no longer plans to replace their former boss in the upcoming months.
“All of a sudden they were like, ‘We’re not going to be working on filling the position, we probably will not have anyone taking over until the following school year,’ which is crazy, because we’ve got multiple sports that still need to happen for the rest of the academic year,” Chen said.
Jillian Pasquarella, a third-year film major and student employee for broadcasting, was also left shocked by the sudden announcement.
“We were kind of just left in the dust, with very little communication from the school about it. Most of what I know is from what my boss told me before he left, and then the two-ish emails that we got from the athletics department,” Pasquerella said.
Seemingly out of nowhere, Chen, Pasquarella and other members of the broadcast team were forced to take on the responsibilities intended for a full-time employee of the university. With this came additional stress, time required and no extra pay.
According to Pasquarella, the team reached out to higher-ups in the athletic department to request more training for less experienced employees, but have yet to receive any assistance. The lack of instruction provided has led to accidental breakage of broadcasting equipment to the tune of several thousand dollars, according to Chen. In addition to damages posing an expensive predicament, the quality of the broadcasts has been negatively impacted.
“I mean, it’s ESPN, so us not having a head of the broadcast department doesn’t just affect SU athletics, it affects the [Western Athletic Conference (WAC)], because now the WAC commercials aren’t running, and our commercials for other places in Washington aren’t running, and then we’re putting out a not so great broadcast compared to all these other schools,” Pasquarella said. “What does that make our school look like?”
Marketing for the university often utilizes clips created by broadcasting, one of the main ways Seattle U attracts prospective student-athletes. Pasquarella worries the declining quality could impact enrollment, furthering the financial struggle. She and her coworkers are also concerned about maintaining the sustainability of broadcasting as basketball season, one of the university’s most popular sports, begins.
“There’s no way for this to run smoothly. It’s chaos trying to get a broadcast to run, let alone multiple per week,” Pasquarella said.
Broadcasting is not the only department experiencing the impact of the current hiring pause. Though Malins stated that student employment is not included in the slowdown, some students seeking campus jobs have struggled to find employment for various reasons, as well as experiencing a lack of communication from administration.
Juno Fuja, a first-year student recently hired as a building safety monitor, waited weeks after applying to hear back from anyone in public safety.
“It took a lot of emailing to actually get my training done,” Fuja said. “ I was told that it’s been kind of hard to find new building safety monitors because there’s a lot of stuff going on within administration.”
Even after completing their training and officially starting work, Fuja still felt out of the loop when it came to how their job would be affected by the issues happening higher up based on the lack of communication they experienced leading up to being hired.
“I feel like for people right now who are applying to jobs and just aren’t hearing back, because I know people who have applied to five, ten jobs and just haven’t heard back from any of them. It’s frustrating,” they said.
Higher-up positions at the university have proven to be affected by this decision as well. In a campus-wide email sent Nov. 13, Provost Shane Martin announced that Dr. Rick Fehrenbacher, Vice Provost for Academic Technology and Innovation and Director of the Center for Digital Learning and Innovation (CDLI) would be retiring at the end of the academic year and his position would not be filled after his departure. This decision leaves the future of the CDLI somewhat in limbo, though Martin wrote in an email to the university that “a working group will be convened to develop a plan, in consultation with key stakeholders, about the future of academic technology at Seattle University. We will provide updates on this work as it progresses.”
Malins stated that the hiring slowdown will “continue until costs are reduced to cover the revenue shortfall,” but the university is “confident that plans currently in place will yield the necessary savings.” In the meantime, students hope to see increased communication from administration regarding the university’s budget.
