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Emerson College announces layoffs amidst enrollment decline linked to campus protests
The college is partly blaming the declining numbers on negative press from the pro-Palestinian demonstrations and arrests.
Following an enrollment decline, Emerson College, in an email sent to faculty and staff Tuesday, announced that it will lay off staff and not fill some vacant positions in fiscal year 2025, according to The Boston Globe.
The college is blaming the enrollment decline in part on “negative press and social media” from the pro-Palestinian demonstrations and subsequent arrests.
In the early morning hours of April 25, 118 student protesters were arrested by Boston police when officers swept through the pro-Palestine encampment at Boylston Place Alley, a public right-of-way that leads to the State Transportation Center.
President Jay Bernhardt wrote that he expects the enrollment decline to last only one year, but the effects will ripple through the budget for the next several.
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“We attribute this reduction to multiple factors, including national enrollment trends away from smaller private institutions, an enrollment deposit delay in response to the new FAFSA rollout, student protests targeting our yield events and campus tours, and negative press and social media generated from the demonstrations and arrests,” Bernhardt wrote in an email shared with the Globe.
Michelle Gaseau, an Emerson spokesperson, declined to comment on the subject Wednesday morning and said the message was internal.
Boston.com could not reach members of the Emerson Staff Union in time for publication.
However, a faculty member told the Globe they were blindsided by the announcement.
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“It doesn’t make any sense,” said Illona Yosefov, an instructional technologist at the college and chief steward of the union. Yosefov is also a member of the Faculty and Staff for Justice in Palestine.
“It feels like exploiting the situation to do whatever you want. It also feels like a way to quiet dissent, to scare people into compliance.” Yosefov said. “I wonder if [Bernhardt is] trying to signal to all of them to behave come fall, or else.”
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