Work Woes, VAPA Edition

By Sarah St. Lifer '10

Starting May 5, regular pay (non Federal Work Study) student employees in VAPA were required to cut their work hours to three hours per week. Students and employers were forced to rearrange schedules in order to cut back for the sake of the VAPA Budget. While the school is plotting new methods of hiring in expectation of the increase in student population, current students are subject to unplanned interruptions.

Visual Arts Program Coordinator Liz Pellerin said, “It’s unfortunate that I had to notify regular pay students to inform them that they can only work a maximum of 3 hours/week for the remainder of term. This wasn’t something I anticipated but because students used up more work hours earlier in the term I am finding that I have to cut back on their hours at the end of term. In VAPA I continuously review our student employment budget to ensure that we’re working/staying within that budget.”

At institutions like Rutgers University, once students are notified that they have been offered FWS funds, they receive a job preference form. Beginning mid-August and throughout September FWS students at Rutgers are typically placed within the departments they requested. Meanwhile, Bennington College does not assign or guarantee employment for FWS students.

In VAPA there are two separate budget accounts; one paying regular pay students and another paying FWS students. The budget for non-FWS students was to last until the end of the year, but ran lower sooner than expected. It is recognized that VAPA is in a special situation because supervisors are hiring specialized positions. In regards to FWS students, Pellerin said, “it’s important to remember that the College is committed to assisting awarded students with finding work assignments and is also committed to assisting, where possible, regular pay students with finding opportunities as well.”

Many were caught off guard by the need to cut their work hours, but the faculty in VAPA has been constantly aware of the adjustments the budget may face. “Although setting a maximum hours threshold may be a bit difficult at times for our supervisors, they too know that our budget is well defined and because of the nature of our work here, they understand that the work hours will fluctuate during the academic term – sometimes we’ll have students working a great deal of hours (during productions and the like) and other times the hours are scaled back – so that we ultimately remain within our budget at the end of the term.”

Students are aware that it is not solely the school taking money away from students, but misappropriation of funds. Concerning the competition for on campus jobs, Charlie Horwich ’11 mentioned that his schedule as a darkroom monitor is consistent, and that he was astonished to hear that a student’s hours could fluctuate depending on the work load; “it’s not an issue of the school taking our money away from us, it’s also about students taking away money from other students in other department.” He added, “as always a little transparency would’ve been nice.”