President Rabinowitz Talks Spring 2021, Race on Campus and Retirement at Virtual Town Hall
BY: LEAH CHIAPPINO
(Oct. 31, 2020) — On Oct. 28, university administrators sat down with student journalists for a virtual town hall to discuss the spring semester, race issues on campus, and President Stuart Rabinowitz’s retirement. This is the second town hall the administration has hosted since the semester began, and the first to include Rabinowitz. You can read our coverage of the last town hall here.
The event was moderated by Daniel Cody, Sarah Emily Baum, Shayna Sengstock and Rachel Luscher from The Hofstra Chronicle, The Hofstra Clocktower, WRHU and the HEAT Network respectively. In addition to President Rabinowitz, the university panel also included:
W. Houston Dougharty, Vice President for Student Affairs
Gabrielle St. Léger, Assistant Vice President and Dean of Students
Cornell L. Craig, Chief Diversity and Inclusion Officer
Herman Berliner, Provost and Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs
Melissa Connolly, Vice President for University Relations
Joseph Barkwill, Vice President for Facilities and Operations
Dolores Fredrich, Esq., Senior Vice President for Legal Affairs and General Counsel
You can still watch a recording of the broadcast here. Otherwise, we’ve taken the time to compile some important clips and summarize key moments below.
Q: What are some changes to campus life that students can expect next semester?
“As a broad statement I would say that we don't know what next semester will look like in terms of what the governor will say, and he has a tendency to make decisions and make them rather quickly,” Rabinowitz said. “We don’t know what the infection rate will be. I don’t know if there will be a vaccine or not.”
Dougharty said the Officer of Student Affairs hopes to be able to hold as many events in person as possible, but that their continuance will depend upon infection rates and state guidelines.
Current plans for the spring resemble those for the fall. Students can opt for classes fully online, but in-person and hybrid courses will also be offered. Masks and social distancing will still be required.
He attributed virtual learning improvements to the training faculty has received, as well as technology the university invested in such as Lecture Capture. The university plans to invest in Swivel as well as Advanced Lecture Capture, the latter of which will use additional microphones so remote students can hear students in the classroom.
Q: Will you continue surveillance testing in the spring? Will sample sizes change based on infection rates?
According to Rabinowitz, unless there is a vaccine, the current testing strategy will likely stay the same. If new data comes out that suggests the university should conduct testing more frequently or differently, or if a faster test becomes available, they will adjust accordingly.
Q: President Rabinowitz is retiring in August 2021. Are we in the process of looking for a successor? Will students have a say in this process?
Berliner said the committee in charge of hiring Rabinowitz’s successor has narrowed the search to three candidates. In addition to Berliner, the committee is composed of trustees, the Student Government president Tara Stark, and a faculty member. This is the first time in university history that a faculty member and/or student has sat on the committee.
The committee expects to make its recommendation to the Board of Trustees before the end of the fall semester. The board will then make a final decision. “We really need someone now that will lead us and really build on all the accomplishments of the last 20 years,” Berliner said.
Q: In light of the pay freezes, furloughs, and cuts across the university, have any of you, as some of the highest-paid members of the administration, taken any pay cuts?
According to Rabinowitz, no administrators have received pay raises. Several higher-level administrators voluntarily have taken significant pay cuts or established scholarships out of portions of their salary. Other departments, such as members of the teaching faculty, agreed to salary freezes in cases they would usually see a raise. “You could not ask our unions […] not to take a raise even though they had contracts that entitled them to take raises unless they knew everybody was sharing in the sacrifice,” he said.
Berliner said he expects faculty will have routine pay increases reinstated next year.
Q: After denying repeated requests from student activists to remove the Thomas Jefferson statue, the university relocated it to the Emily Lowe Museum this past June at the height of the George Floyd protests.
After declining the move for years, what changed?
Though protests regarding the statue originated in 2004, Rabinowitz said, they resurfaced in 2018 as a product of the Jefferson Has Gotta Go! movement on campus, garnering national press attention. “We were getting blasted by certain conservative media that wanted to make us part of the political wars that were going on in the country,” Rabinowitz said. He assembled a committee to discuss the statue’s placement, which ultimately decided on leaving it be.
Then, Black Lives Matter demonstrations made a resurgence this past June. “I had this epiphany that if I were a Black student, I wouldn't want to look at Jefferson every single day in order to get from North Campus to South Campus,” he said. “It was really my motivation to go to the committee [in charge of the statue].”
Not only was the statue moved to the museum, he added; the university has also planted trees around it so no student might see it through the museum window unless they went out of their way to do so. The administration will also be adding a plaque to contextualize his role as a Founding Father with his role as a prominent slave owner.
“I didn't want to cause our Black students any more pain than they had to endure,” he said.
Reporters pressed the matter further. “You said the most recent wave of Black Lives Matter protests enriched your understanding of it or drove home certain points,” Baum said. (“As well as Cornell Craig, who lectures me quite often,” Rabinowitz added.)
“What did Black Lives Matter protestors say back in June that they weren’t also saying in 2018 and 2019?” Baum asked.
Rabinowitz said the protests had grown nationwide. “You couldn't avoid it,” he said. “I don't know why it came to me but I thought we had to do something.” He again added that after the 2018 Jefferson Has Gotta Go! protests, he hired Cornell Craig, Hofstra’s first chief diversity and inclusion officer.
Q: In the fall, some students had to pay out-of-pocket for a hotel because the university did not have enough quarantine housing to accommodate those returning from travel advisory states. For the next semester, will there be more accommodations for these students?
The university is working to accommodate as many students as possible, but they are unsure what the capacity will be because they don’t know how many states will be on the advisory list at that time. According to St. Léger, the university will provide guidance to students and families regarding local hotels and outside accommodations.
Q: According to Newsday, the basketball team recently started practice again, but many other clubs are still must have online meetings. How do you decide which organizations can have in-person events?
Rabinowitz said that athletic teams are training mostly one-on-one, with masks and social distancing. If there is a season per NCAA regulations, athletes will be tested three times a week, paid for by the athletics department. It would be too costly to test everyone in the university and open up all student clubs, Rabinowitz said.
He raised questions about whether or not there will even be an athletic season, due to the need to quarantine for 14 days when traveling between states and the risk of close contact sports such as wrestling.
Q: Why can't we end next semester early rather than having five sporadic days off? How will you accommodate students’ mental health concerns at this time?
Rabinowitz said that having a traditional spring break would be a “prescription for disaster,” and it was possible the university would have to test all students before they left, and all students when they returned. Administration considered ending the semester a week earlier, but they determined that would interfere with graduation, which the university hopes to still hold in-person in some capacity.
With the five sporadic days off, students will still be able to get a break, but the break will not be long enough for students to travel.
Q: Will there be a tuition increase for next semester and/or next year?
The university has not determined the budget yet. As the university is dealing with lost revenue, and increasing expenses, it is ”highly likely.” The courses that are offered are based on enrollment, so if there is lower enrollment the courses offered may be more limited, though that often means dropping a section of course, rather than eliminating a course.
Q: What's the status of the list of demands Black student organizations published in The Chronicle at the beginning of the semester?
Rabinowitz said the university takes those demands very seriously and they have been distributed to the Board of Trustees. “We’re having a dialogue, which is great.”
Craig said the university is “making progress” on the demands and that members of the higher administration are meeting regularly with student activists to figure out how to best prioritize and address their concerns. “We’re really working with students to figure out what’s practical now [due to the pandemic],” he said.
St. Léger also commended the dialogues. “We’re not only learning how Hofstra works,” she said. “We’re learning how it can work, and what we can do in the times we’re living in.”
