Increase in virus cases could impact UA's plans for fall semester, employee furloughs

After announcing the UA would return to in-person classes this fall, President Robert Robbins said Thursday that the increase of COVID-19 cases in the state could impact the start of the upcoming semester.

Meanwhile, UA faculty and staff continue to express concern about a furlough plan that is set to start July 1. Not having in-person classes this fall would likely deepen the financial impact of COVID-19 on campus employees.

With students scheduled to return to campus Aug. 24, Robbins said he and his team will monitor conditions before deciding whether students would be allowed to participate in in-person classes this fall.

“If I had to say today would we would reopen, no, because ... the ICUs are full,” he said. “We cannot have a situation where we’re bringing students back to campus, asking our faculty and staff to come back to campus when we’re in truly an exponential growth of the number of cases here.”

Robbins said he’d feel comfortable reopening in August only if the community’s use of face coverings, social distancing and staying at home works to flatten the curve of new cases.

As the University of Arizona administration continues to reevaluate its ability to reopen, more than 300 UA faculty members petitioned the chair of the faculty to vote on delaying the onset of the university furlough plan from July 1 to September.

More than 1,400 UA faculty and staff gathered via Zoom on Thursday to initiate the vote on whether to delay the start of furloughs until September. The result of the vote, which will be released Friday, would act as an advisory decision that university administrators can choose to agree or disagree with.

Led by the Coalition for Academic Justice – made up of about 200 faculty, staff and graduate students – the requests to delay furloughs come after many say the university’s financial plan lacked the “robust representation of the people who are actually engaged in the work of our core mission – staff, faculty and students.”

Since the furlough plan was announced in April, it has received some modifications based on feedback from the campus community, but faculty and staff say it isn’t enough.

Since forming the coalition in April, members say they have reached out to the administration on multiple occasions asking for data that supports the plan and have even put together their own alternative furlough and pay-cut plan, which they said would save $86 million.

“So many of us were concerned that this financial plan was poised to inflict irreversible damage to our university’s core missions of teaching, research and service,” said Celeste Gonzalez de Bustamante, associate professor at the UA School of Journalism and member of the coalition steering committee. “Perhaps our biggest concern is the lack of transparency about the data allegedly driving the administration’s plan.”

Back to homepage

Subscriber Login

Keep reading with a digital access subscription.

Subscribe now

The coalition also hired an outside auditor to review the university’s financial statements. Howard Bunsis, a professor of accounting at Eastern Michigan University, presented his findings to the coalition Thursday.

The results of the audit reportedly show the university has more than $800 million in financial reserves as well as other resources that could potentially save employees from having to take furloughs and pay cuts.

“When this furlough was announced in mid-April, it was the first and most extreme furlough plan in the country among its peers. And although it’s been modified a little bit … it is still way out of step with our peer institutions,” said Gary Rhoades, director for the Center for the Study of Higher Education. “Why this high level of furloughing and reallocating of monies when the financial situation clearly does not call for it.”

Another concern for the coalition is the furlough plan was meant to prevent layoffs and noncontract renewals. The group reported it knew of at least 200 UA employees who had been laid off due to the pandemic.

“We thought it was the most transparent and responsible thing to do and let everyone know that we were going to face some serious financial challenges,” Robbins said. “And we thought the fairest thing to do was to ask everyone to take a pay reduction through a furlough based program.”

According to the UA administration, the salary furloughs are expected to save the UA about $95 million amid projected losses of $250 million through the 2021 fiscal year.

“We’ve tried to avoid layoffs, but they have happened. We’re trying to listen to what everyone has to say and make the right decision for everyone,” Robbins said.

Robbins also said that out-of-state and international students make up the majority of tuition revenue for the university, and it’s likely that many of those students will not be able to attend UA this fall. He said that if coronavirus cases continue to rise in Arizona, the university would look at a closer to $500 million shortfall.

“The problem with their furlough plan is they want to delay it because their working hypothesis is that we’ve seen a lot of uptick in the number of students who want to come back to the university. The problem is that those students are not necessarily out of state, and they’re certainly not international students, and if the number of cases are like they are today and continue to rise, we may not be able to open the campus.”

On Friday, the coalition will release the results of its vote, as well as the financial report. The group said it is hoping that faculty, staff and graduate students will be given the opportunity to be brought into the conversation for the future of the campus.