by Rebecca Richardson

The Board of Trustees did not at all approve of what the Provost intended to do for the workers of the University in the wake of COVID-19. To take some millions from the fortune of their dear Endowment would be impoverishing the University to the most dreadful degree. The Board begged the Provost to think again on the subject. How could the Endowment be robbed of so large a sum? And what possible claim could the University staff, who were after all on short-term contracts, which the Board considered as no relationship at all, have on the University’s generosity to so large an amount? It was very well known that no long-term obligation was ever supposed to exist between the staff and the University, and why was the University to ruin itself, and its Endowment, by giving away all its money to the everyday workers of the place?

“The Long-Range Vision of the University,” the Provost replied, “says something about the University being ‘extraordinarily well positioned, with its disciplinary and interdisciplinary strengths’ – to say nothing of its financial strengths. And it says that the University ‘fervently underscores the need to provide strong support for the people in our community, and to advance our mission with integrity and values.’”

“They could not have anticipated such a crisis as this, which has us 200 million under for the year. Had they known what we’d face in 2020, they could not have thought of such a thing. The Endowment might be at only 24 billion; remember, the stock market may have regained much of its value, but who knows what the future holds if our hedge fund managers fail to earn us the 11.3% on the investments that we came to expect from 2018, and we have another lackluster year, like 2019, with its 6.5% return. After all, that would mean only 1 billion, 755 million dollars on a return of 27 billion. Surely the University’s mission wouldn’t think of such a thing as dipping into the Endowment!”

“No one has stipulated any particular action for supporting workers. Student and faculty petitions merely ask that something be done.”

“Well, then,” the Board replied, “LET something be done for them, but THAT something need not be continued employment. Consider,” the Board added, “that when the money is once parted with, it never can return to the Endowment. The workers will spend it on rent and food, and it will be gone for ever.”

“Why, to be sure,” said the Provost, very gravely, “the time may come when the University will regret that so large a sum was parted with. If the University is to build another shrine to Silicon Valley in the library, for instance, it would be a very convenient sum to have.”

“To be sure it would.”

“Perhaps, then, it would be better for all parties – since the workers are also the University, and the University is the Endowment – if we were to shorten the period of guaranteed continuity of employment. Another month or two would be a wonderful window for workers to find another job during the most rapid unemployment crisis since the Great Depression!”

“Oh! Beyond anything generous! What University would do half so much for the workers, even if they were REALLY tenured faculty! And as it is – only lecturers and staff and contract workers! But the University has such a generous spirit!”

“No one, at least, can think we have not done enough for them: even themselves, they can hardly expect more.”

“There is no knowing what THEY may expect,” said the Board, “but we are not to think of their expectations: the question is, what the University can afford to do.”

“Certainly, and I think we may afford to give them one more month of continuance. As it is, without any aid from us, they will have each twelve hundred dollars from their government stimulus checks – which we can guarantee, because we luckily had the foresight not to pay the staff so much as to disqualify them from such programs.”

“To be sure it is a very comfortable amount of money for any mere person, who hasn’t an Endowment to manage. It strikes me that they can want nothing more at all. They will have one month to look for more work, and if they can’t find another job right away or have trouble navigating the broken unemployment system, they will be very comfortable in the meantime with their twelve hundred dollar checks.”

“Indeed, it would be very unreasonable to expect more than that from a University with only a 24 or 27 billion dollar Endowment. Do but consider, Provost, how excessively comfortable your furloughed workers will be with a month to find a job and their twelve hundred dollar stimulus checks! Now that they can’t afford an apartment in the Bay Area, they will live so cheap in an RV on El Camino! Their housekeeping will be nothing at all. They will have no car, no commute, no need for work clothes. Only conceive how comfortable they will be, with so little to have to maintain! Twelve hundred dollars! I am sure I cannot imagine how they will spend half of it, and, as to our giving them more than a month of pay continuity, it is quite absurd to think of it. They will be much more able to give YOU something from their stimulus checks.”

This argument was irresistible. It gave to the Provost’s intentions whatever of decision was wanting before; and the University finally resolved, that it would be absolutely unnecessary, if not a dangerous precedent, to spend any of the Endowment on the workers of the University.

Rebecca Richardson is a lecturer in the Program in Writing and Rhetoric at Stanford University, where she wrote a dissertation about self-help and ambition in the Victorian novel. She specializes in nineteenth-century British literature and has published on Charles Dickens, Mary Shelley, Anthony Trollope, and (of course) Jane Austen.