Manhattan College cuts spark protest against president: ‘He even fired the nuns’

Keep Manhattan College in your prayers.

Riverdale’s beloved private Catholic liberal arts university is facing drastic cuts to its staff and course offerings amid on-going financial struggles. Last June, Milo Riverso, a former CEO of an engineering and construction management firm, was appointed president. In the months since, he’s laid off 63 faculty members — nearly 25% of the staff. The most recent round of brutal staffing cuts, which occurred in January, included two nuns, Sr. Remigia Kushner, 82, and Sr. Mary Ann Jacobs, 69.

“If you are committed to the Catholic mission, why would you fire two of its most important guardians?” asked Maeve Adams, 46, an English professor who has been teaching at the school for more than a decade.

“Sr. Remigia Kushner, was on every committee — she’s 82. It was totally shocking to her. Marlene Gottlieb, a Spanish professor and former chair of the languages department who was also laid off in January, told The Post. “She was a fixture at the college. She did all the graduate work for the educational program.”

The small college, which has 3,495 students, most of them undergrad, counts former New York City police commissioner Ray Kelly and novelist James Patterson among its alumni. Patterson has been a vocal and active supporter of its liberal arts program, but some of of the cuts have been particularly devastating to those offerings.

In November, it was announced that the college’s six schools – Engineering, Business, Education, Liberal Arts, Health Professions, and Continuing and Professional Studies – would be merged into three to cut costs. Under the new restructuring, Education, Liberal Arts and Health Profession will now be grouped together as the Science and Liberal Arts school. Even more drastic, in January the school nixed 20 majors and minors including religious studies and French, Italian, Arabic, Chinese and Japanese languages — without consulting any faculty chairs or curriculum committees.

Students have been left scrambling.

“The school legally has to finish our programs out, but there’s still that discussion of, ‘do we transfer?’ For me it’s not worth it, but if I were a freshman in this situation I would definitely consider transferring,” said Grace Cardinal, 20, a junior majoring in communication and minoring in political science. On Jan. 10, less than a week before the Spring semester, the Rochester native got an email alerting her that her reporting and news writing course was canceled – a mandatory class for journalism students.

“I had plenty of friends who had two of their classes canceled a week before the semester started,” she said.

Both students and faculty have been fighting the cost-cutting measures. In December one staffer erected a GoFundMe Page that’s raised $39,000 towards legal services. Roughly 40 of the faculty laid off were tenured, and they allege that the college violated the Faculty Handbook by not giving tenure and tenure-track staffers enough notice of the cuts.

“We were told the goal was to protect the jobs of tenured faculty. That didn’t happen, twice over,” Adams told The Post.

Last month, Riverso emailed staff and students attributing the cuts to deficits over the last five years projected to “exceed $50 million.”

The college’s athletics department went $55.575 million over budget between 2019 and 2022 according to an audit obtained by The Post.

“We’ve also had huge problems with infrastructure — buildings actually falling apart and dangerously so — that have required unexpected outlays. The top of the chapel actually started to fall off last year,” Adams said.

On Tuesday, in an email to The Post, Riverso’s office defended the drastic measures.

“We are addressing our issues and are on a road to financial recovery. As with many institutions of our size, Manhattan College had to make very difficult and painful decisions to address our systemic deficits,” the office wrote. “These decisions were not easy but they were very necessary and overdue … Many of the classes/degrees that were eliminated were severely undersubscribed; consequently, we were left with no choice but to act decisively and swiftly by right-sizing the faculty and staff to develop a sustainable financial model for the College.”

The college made another controversial cost-cutting move when it sold its off-campus dorm, The Overlook Manor for $18 million last year. In September, the community was outraged when The Riverdale Press reported the building was being considered as a shelter for migrants.

Jacobs, meanwhile, an adjunct professor of education for 30 years, and fulltime for 13, seems to be taking the high road.

“From when I started in education and until the day I leave, I will always have the same mantra: what is best for the students!” she told The Post, punctuating the email with a holy sign off.

“Blessings as you spread the good news and what is true.”