“It’s Hard to Have Pride During a Pandemic”
Sue Ramlo
Physics professor
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Akron, Ohio
None of that protected Sue Ramlo. On July 15, the day Akron’s Board of Trustees voted to fire 96 professors, she received a meeting invitation from her new acting dean. She knew what awaited her.
It was nothing specific to her performance, she was told. It was about money. Even before the pandemic, which decimated college budgets across the country, the University of Akron had been bleeding red. Various presidents and a revolving door of chief financial officers had tried different remedies, without success.
“The sky was always falling,” says Ramlo. “Always.”
Two months before the layoffs, the administration eliminated the College of Applied Science and Technology and the College of Education, scattering those faculty members across the campus. One of them was Ramlo, who taught technical physics, software applications, and programming for technology.
Ramlo came late to academe. Having worked in a failing industry — radiation detection — she understood that nothing in life is guaranteed. But teaching seemed satisfying in a way she had not experienced before. In northeastern Ohio, a part of the Rust Belt, Akron plays a pivotal role in helping students get to the next rung of the economic ladder. “That you can help people give their families and children a better life?” she says. “You don’t get that in industry.”
And tenure, which she earned after receiving her doctorate at Akron, offered a measure of security. It also came with an obligation, she felt, to speak up for her colleagues, particularly those in more tenuous positions. As vice president of the faculty union, she often found herself at odds with the administration.
When she was let go, in a meeting that she says lasted about five minutes, Ramlo didn’t yet know how many more indignities lay in wait. She soon discovered she no longer had university email or library privileges, making it harder to look for work and continue her research. She lost her health insurance when the university declared “force majeure,” nullifying a provision in her employment contract that would have covered her for another year. The tuition discount her son was supposed to keep receiving at Akron also evaporated.
Former faculty members and the faculty union are still battling the administration over the conditions and terms of the layoffs. Ramlo, for one, is fighting to get her job back.
The bills started piling up. For the first time since she began working, at age 15, Ramlo applied for unemployment benefits. “It’s hard to have pride during a pandemic,” she says.
Struggling with a loss of identity, a hostile job market, and the overwhelming sadness of being disconnected from her students and colleagues, Ramlo created an email network to provide support and advice to the dozens of professors who had been fired.
“All these months later, we are dealing with so many emotions,” Ramlo says. “It’s this idea that we were discarded. We’re all trash. That we’re not worth anything to the university. No matter how much blood, sweat, and tears we put in.”
With four years to go before she can receive a full pension from the state teachers’ union, Ramlo has made it a priority to find work in Ohio. She has applied to public colleges, private colleges, and online programs. Some of her former colleagues have been able to find jobs, but they’re “mostly younger faculty in their 30s and 40s,” she says. “The people who have been really struggling to find other work are people like me. I’m 58.”
Then Akron circled back to her, asking if she would teach some of the courses this spring that she used to teach, but at an adjunct’s wage. What choice did she have? She said yes.
She estimates she will make about 25 percent of what she used to, carrying 75 percent of her former teaching load. She wonders what her former colleagues, still employed, are thinking.
“They avoid us. Maybe it’s survivor’s guilt,” she says. So many are dealing with their own issues, too, like heavier teaching loads to make up for the reduction in their ranks, and the stress of Covid-19.
Her support is the email group. About 20 are regularly active. But many tell her privately that although they are quiet, they read everything on the chain, and it helps them get through the really bad days.
“I feel like a mother hen,” she says. “But sometimes it’s overwhelming to me. Sometimes we’re just on the phone and we’re crying. Because it’s so much. It’s just so much to absorb and deal with. I say the serenity prayer every day. Every damn day. Because I don’t know what else to do.”
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