AU's Communication Crisis
“Change can't wait”
These three infamous words have echoed through my mind since arriving at AU. Freshman year, it represented a cute slogan, something you’d expect to see plastered on buses at the most “liberal university in America.” As a junior, the motto doesn’t quite warrant the same reaction, not after AU administration has failed to be transparent with the community, silenced student free speech, hired an outside consulting firm known for mass layoffs, and denied assault survivors the support that they have requested – all while remaining silent through it all.
Connecting these incidents reveals an unfortunate trend, one where administration is simply not communicating with the community that allows American University – and their paychecks -- to exist. To help better understand how administration is making change nearly impossible at AU, I sat down with Andrew Demshuk, an author and professor of history at American University. Professor Demshuk spoke about his experience at AU, in particular focusing on the administration’s recent hiring of Huron Consulting Group, a firm infamous for massive layoffs and the slashing of vital university programs. According to a letter published on Dec. 4 on AU’s human resources website, Huron Consulting Group was hired so the administration can “remain focused on ensuring we are supporting our most critical resource – our people.” However, Professor Demshuk’s testimony suggested otherwise.
In the beginning of our conversation, I asked Demshuk why AU would resort to hiring Huron Consulting while constantly advertising their faculty and staff’s expertise in education. Surely, I thought, faculty would be a much more viable option to assess the AU community than a group unaware of the inner workings of day-to-day campus life. Demshuk shared my confusion in the decision, stating: “The professional expertise is here [at AU] and I can not fathom that, given the track record of Huron Consulting Group at other institutions, that people inside the university could not have done a better job.”
Despite AU’s wrongdoings in hiring Huron, Demshuk noted that faculty and staff still work together to build something worth admiring at the university. “We use what few resources we have to create community,” he said. To show how community exists despite receiving very little assistance from administration Demshuk shared a story of his colleague, who worked to put on a display chronicling various religious art forms.
“She had the exhibition wall in Katzen – repainted and everything,” Demshuk said. ”It was beautiful. Not only did she do it all herself, she paid for it out of pocket. And that is unforgivable when you have a faculty member who puts that kind of creative effort in. She had to do all the advertising pretty much herself, and she had to pay for the wall to be painted for the art to be exhibited. That does not cost the university much money and it would have been a profound way for the university to say: ‘thank you for taking this creative action’.”
The story of professor Demshuk’s colleague illustrates how the administration has not offered sufficient support to our most critical resources: our people, and has instead hired a firm known for laying people off. “I wish that faculty recommendations through the senate and other channels about the Huron Consulting Group had been taken more seriously,” said Demshuk.
Huron Consulting Group has an absolutely dreadful reputation in the field of higher education. The effects of its presence in higher education includes:
Over 100 employees laid off at the University of Wisconsin Madison
122 employees, a third of whom who were union members, laid off at The New School in New York City
Over 50 employees laid off at University of Arkansas' medical school
Over 20 language programs cut at the University of West Virginia
Hiring an organization with such a poor reputation is a direct attack on the entire AU community, signaling that administration would rather use our tuition dollars to hire a consulting firm to do their job for them, rather than simply communicate with the AU community. Instead, the school would rather pick a firm known for decimating university communities like ours.
It is important to note, though, that the presence of Huron on campus is not the largest problem at hand. Instead, it represents a symptom of a larger issue; one where the administration continuously refuses to act in a transparent manner about issues concerning everyone here at AU.
Ignoring the Changemakers They Advertise
Dr. Guatham Rao, another history professor at American University, reinforced Demshuk’s claims.“The idea that in the background, the administration was not happy and trying to find solutions to problems people didn’t know existed, and now these ‘solutions’ are going to be taken out on staff and faculty is deeply disturbing,” Rao said. “I think for people who have given their careers to this university, the idea that not only are their jobs in peril, but the place that they love is potentially being changed, is a pretty disheartening thing to go through.”
Rao characterized the problematic nature of the Huron hiring exceptionally well; there is no denying the consulting group’s actions in higher education, yet somehow there remains a larger problem looming. To hire a group that has a history of ushering in fundamental change at universities without speaking to students, faculty, and staff beforehand shows that our campus community’s greatest threat may not be the recommendations of the firm, but rather an administration who consistently fails to be transparent with its community.
Eleanor Sciannella, an AU staff member who works in financial aid, describes the administration's lack of openness as nothing short of ”a chronic communication problem.” Administration’s inability to effectively communicate, along with the irresponsible hiring of Huron creates negative impacts that will directly affect not only staff and faculty at AU, but the entire student body as well.
To better understand the scope of the issue, I spoke with Owen Camferdam, a student organizer involved heavily in the effort to reform AU’s transparency crisis. Camferdam is a part of a coalition of staff and students who recently put on a forum for the AU community to express concerns about issues plaguing the community– primarily the lack of transparency regarding the Huron hiring.
“The communication between the administration and students is incredibly concerning. I heard about Huron for the first time in January, but the first time I ever received a direct line of communication about it was at the forum on April 4. Even after waiting four months, though, [administration’s] answers were vague and unhelpful.”
Camferdam was not the only one who found the forum unhelpful. At the event, several remarks by Provost Vicky Wilkins were met with audible laughs, gasps, and mutters of confusion. In particular, Wilkins raised her eyebrows when one student asked about how much it cost the university to hire an outside consulting firm, to which she flippantly answered: “Two to three staff salaries.”
While members of the audience laughed at the inadequacy of the reply, I could not help but feel a sense of desperation rush over me. The AU administration holds an immense amount of power over the direction of hundreds of people’s lives, so hearing the provost's cold answer was not only frightening, but incredibly disappointing. Instead of using that money to hire and uplift more staff members, the administration decided that money was more useful in hiring a consulting firm to tell them which employees to lay off soon.
Sciannella was also aware of the forum, and acknowledged that it was a step towards the right direction. “The forum was a pretty big deal, because it was the first time since I’ve been here – which hasn’t been all that long, admittedly -- that there’s been any kind of real back and forth with an administrator and staff in this way,” she said. While these events are part of building up communication between admin and the community, it is difficult for students to build trust with administration members that so flippantly write off the potential salaries of their own employees in public.
After the forum, Camferdam continued to expand upon his frustration with the administration's lack of transparency and decision making. “Eighty percent of the school budget is made up of our tuition, and the reason students come to AU is because of our prestigious staff and faculty,” he said. “The fact that our ‘budget crisis’ is a result of students transferring out illustrates that the places we need to invest in are the programs and people themselves. [Administration] are indebted to the AU community, and the decision making process has simply not represented that.”
Waiting for Change
Camferdam also added that the administration’s recent indoor protest ban is a “good reminder that transparency issues go both ways … not only does administration not communicate what's going on from their end, but they also are putting restrictions on students’ ability to express and communicate what's going on.”
While administration has largely been silent on these issues, Camferdam and other students have been involved with faculty and staff to organize an action where the AU community will be able to express their collective displeasure with administration.
“On Wednesday, May 1 at 12 p.m. all of these different groups on campus who have their own issues [with administration] are going to unite their voice in one place: on President Burwell’s lawn,” Camferdam said. “It seems that the only way to solve this communication crisis is to go up and tell them ourselves.”
AU’s media relations team denied our request for an interview but left the following comment: “Since December 2023, AU has consistently provided community messages on Huron and their important role in elevating our work and advancing strategic priorities.” They linked three memos about Huron, which were only sent after the firm was already hired. These memos were sent from early last December to the beginning of April, showing that AU admin did not, in fact, communicate with the AU community before deciding to hire this harmful firm.
The administration’s lack of clear communication before committing actions that harm our community shows that AU admin does not care about fostering the community that our students, staff, and faculty have built. Until the administration starts taking our demands seriously, they better expect to be reminded of who this campus really belongs to: the people.