Congratulations to newly-hired UMass Director of Housing & Residential Life, Eddie Hull, for his recent nomination of Scrooge of the Year Award by Jobs with Justice for latest plans to fire 73 undergraduate employees at UMass-Amherst prior to the December holidays and radically reconfigure Housing & Residential Life to include more over-paid administrative positions.  Mr. Hull chose to announce this two weeks before the end of the fall semester.  When asked why no student workers had been involved in the decision to restructure these positions, Mr. Hull stated that there was more than one way to hear student concerns and “sometimes, students don’t need to be at the table to do this.”

Mr. Hull has the notoriety of being the first Western Massachusetts nominee for this national award. We want to make sure to congratulate him for such a distinction.  You can send him (and all his superiors!) a brief email message from the UAW 2322 website in order to help support workers and students at UMass Amherst.

Voting for the Scrooge of the Year Award began on December 15th and will conclude on December 21st with the announcement of the winner.  More information about the nominees and how to vote can be found at Scrooge of the Year Award.  Please take a moment to vote, and make sure to send Eddie and his bosses a note of congratulations!

Vote today for UMass Amherst ResLife Director Eddie Hull to be named Job with Justice’s national “Scrooge of the Year”:

Students at the University of Massachusetts Amherst received an early Christmas gift from their esteemed Director of Housing and Residential Life, Eddie Hull… the loss of their jobs. In a move even the Scrooge would find wicked, Eddie sent an email to 73 undergraduate employees informing them they would be unemployed at the end of the school year, just two weeks before the end of the semester because, what better time to tell students they are fired than when they are too stressed with finals to organize against such a vicious attack. When asked to justify the cuts, Eddie replied they were part of “restructuring of Residential Life  at UMass.” Asked why no students were present in conversations, Eddie said there was more than one way to hear student concerns and “sometimes, students don’t need to be at the table to do this.” Now Eddie is saying the cuts will open up some “flexibility” in the budget, and by flexibility he means to replace 54 student jobs with 2 highly paid associate directors for the exact same cost of $200,000.

You can count Assistant Residence Directors -GEO members- and other UAW 2322 members -Apartment Living Assistants- amongst the students he is laying off.  Hull has a history of ignoring student input, as chronicled in Duke’s student newspaper from 2005, when he was Director of Housing at that University:

Let’s come right out and say it: Housing at Duke is a mess. This condition has little to do with the nature of housing, even less to do with the fantastic staff of Residence Life and Housing Services and a great deal to do with the leadership style of RLHS Dean Eddie Hull.

It sometimes appears that Hull does not respect students. He is the master of the vaguely affirmative response that seems to promise future action, but that actually means he is going to do what he thinks best at a timetable that suits him and him alone. Student leaders, despite maintaining an affable mien for the most part, are deeply frustrated.

Vote today for Eddie Hull!