Four of five staff therapist positions were eliminated this past week, despite a recent issue of the Chronicle about the dire need for mental health support (especially identity-affirming therapy) for Columbia students, and amid rising suicide rates and a global adolescent mental health crisis. Counseling Services have been gutted, despite the college’s insistence that it “values student mental health” and after sending an email to the whole college on March 21 to “note the college is not planning reductions in student counseling.”

With this cut, the school is losing valuable institutional knowledge, advocacy for student mental health across student services, and therapy for Latinx, queer, and neurodivergent students who want a therapist who shares their identities. The school is also losing a significant source of support that has helped hundreds of students each year cope with mental health concerns, both stewarding students through crises and helping to prevent them in the first place. 

This loss will be felt most acutely by students who already struggle to stay in school. Many of the students we see in our office do not have insurance or the financial means to pay for therapy. Since Columbia does not require students to have health insurance, the Counseling Services office has been one of the only ways students can access this necessary, sometimes life-saving, mental health care. My former colleagues and I are gravely concerned about the negative impact this decision will have on students’ wellbeing. 

I also write as a staff member and board member of United Staff of Columbia College, which saw 53 cuts in this round of layoffs. This whole process has been cruel and inhumane. We have had no guidance or information, nor have our managers. The first time I received any communication from the VP of Student Affairs about the unprecedented financial crisis we seem to be facing was the day my position was eliminated. This has been a failure of management and leadership on an epic scale.  

We have had no clarity on the criteria being considered for layoffs or even how or when to expect notice. We have been shut out of decision-making processes outside of a vague call for ideas on how to cut costs. We have continued to do our work in quiet agony to support the students, who are also confused and stressed by all of this, as we have awaited these decisions for five months. We have continually asked for transparency, for a stake in the process; the college has “listened” but has not turned our feedback into action or has actively dismissed it.  The college has repeatedly denied our request to bargain the impact of these layoffs, in violation of national labor law, up until the day they were announced. It has felt, in the end, like awaiting a firing squad.

After five months and repeated calls for transparency by staff, faculty and students, our livelihoods have been reduced to a sentence: $15 million in administrative cuts. We are real people with lives and families. Many of us work multiple jobs as it is to afford rent and essentials. This news would have been devastating regardless but the way this process has unfolded has been nothing short of dehumanizing. We deserve better and our students deserve better from the leaders who allegedly support their education. 

To our students: I want to say that we are profoundly sorry you will be losing trusted advisors, mentors, therapists and other supporters. We have tried to do everything in our power to fight for you to have a supportive learning environment with minimal disruption to your education and we have not been able to protect you from this loss. We are sorry for the ways your school has continually failed you and those of us who remain will continue to fight for you to have the school you deserve. 

Johanna Fierke is a staff therapist at Columbia College Chicago and board secretary for the UsofCC staff union. She also is a member of the union’s bargaining team.

Copy edited by Doreen Abril Albuerne-Rodriguez

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