GODDARD COLLEGE TEACHERS, STUDENTS PROTEST 16 FIRINGS
PLAINFIELD - Students have lost their majors. Faculty who thought their jobs were safe have found out they were not. And the future of Goddard College itself is imperiled by the actions of its president, members of the Goddard community said Wednesday.
President Richard Greene, who fired 16 faculty and staff at the liberal arts college last week, is ignoring the democratic process that is Goddard's foundation, said Mark Greenberg, a professor who was among those fired. He said Greene's changes -- including doing away with entire academic departments could alter Goddard's character irreparably.
"Greene, with at least the tacit approval of the board of trustees, is systematically and ruthlessly dismantling Goddard; killing it under the guise of improving it," Greenberg said at a news conference Wednesday.
"Students are calling their advisers and teachers and people that they trust at Goddard and saying, 'My area of study is eliminated,' There is no music left at Goddard zilch, zero," Greenberg said. "There is virtually no feminist or women's studies left at Goddard. There is very little left in the way of writing and literature."
Greenberg and several others plan to ask Goddard's board of trustees to suspend the firings pending an investigation and to allow them to present their own plans for solving the budget crisis that led Greene to make the job cuts. They also called for Greene to disclose details of Goddard's finances.
Greene denied Goddard would lose entire departments and said some of the fired faculty would be replaced.
"We're going to make sure that they're covered one way or another," Greene said.
He also denied that at least three of the firings were in retaliation for union organizing activities.
"I don't know who are the union organizers; we don't have any list of union people," Greene said. "The college supports unionism, and I personally have been a member of a union." Goddard's board of trustees meets this weekend. Greenberg said he had not heard whether he and others would be given a chance to speak.
Greene was the target of protests even before the firings. One action that particularly rankled was his unilateral decision to use telemarketers and offer tuition bargains to attract students, Greenberg said.
That approach doesn't work at a place like Goddard, which doesn't have a grading system and requires students to be motivated enough to propel themselves through their course of study, Greenberg said. 
Fired Goddard College faculty member Richard Schramm gets a hug of support from another faculty member, who declined to be identified. Former teachers held a news conference Wednesday.
