Editorial: UCLA owes students, faculty transparency after callous handling of TFT layoffs

The UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television took center stage last month, laying off 11 employees to make up for a lack of funds.

The layoffs came in early February, just months after TFT’s former dean Teri Schwartz stepped down Dec. 31. Her replacement, interim dean Brian Kite, made the decision in order to address a $2 million deficit in TFT’s budget. The move also eliminated some stipends and contract appointments, along with a reduction in spending budgets and an increase in staff responsibilities.

Students and faculty were never even made aware of the deficit in the first place.

Kite’s lack of communication surrounding the deficit speaks to a blatant disregard for employees and students alike. Perhaps most frustrating, however, is UCLA’s decision to proceed with the layoffs despite pulling in a $5.5 billion windfall during the Centennial Campaign. The university can’t control what areas Centennial donors contributed to, but it can control its publication of where those funds ended up, and, as of now, no one has that information – including those affected by TFT’s layoffs.

While TFT claims its actions had no impact on faculty and student services, students’ educations have suffered and will continue to suffer as a result of these changes.

Graduate students – many of whom are already striking for a cost-of-living adjustment – say winter is TFT’s busiest quarter, as they run a large number of film productions. But with many departments now left shorthanded, graduate students are working more.

And that’s to say nothing of the effects on staff members who were laid off.

Liz Gerds, a former wardrobe stitcher, was let go Feb. 3, a week before her first full year as a full-time employee in the department. For TFT to claim these firings have no impact is naive at best and a blatant lie at worst.

There’s no denying that $2 million is a substantial deficit and that it could lead to some difficult financial decisions. But the $5.5 billion from the Centennial Campaign is also a substantial profit – and it’s the university’s responsibility to make sure the allocation of donations is accessible, public information. In a perfect world, improving transparency wouldn’t only come on the heels of massive deficits and layoffs.

But in this unideal situation, the university owes these employees that transparency, at the very least.

The Centennial Campaign donations aren’t a long-term solution to TFT’s budget problems; they might have served as short-term solutions while the university found a better way to fix the issue. If the TFT donations were there, it seems fair to think the university would have used them before firing long-term employees. But without any funding transparency to turn to, faculty and students alike have no way of understanding the situation fully.

Now, 11 people are out of their jobs, and everyone left behind is scrambling to cover them because the university opted for sudden change.

But at UCLA, that’s just called a director’s dozen.