FAS IT Cuts Back Student User Assistants, Say Move Not Financially Motivated

The Faculty of Arts and Sciences’ Information Technology division plans to cut the jobs of up to 25 students currently employed as User Assistants, FAS IT Senior Client Technology Advisor Noah S. Selsby ’95 confirmed to The Crimson yesterday.

Selsby denied that the cuts were budget-related and wrote that the cuts are aimed at “refocusing the way the services are provided in order to increase efficiency.”

“While the timing of these changes coincides with cuts in other areas of the university, this particular change will not constitute a savings for FAS IT,” Selsby wrote.

At a mandatory meeting for all UAs held yesterday, FAS IT administrators told students that the changes make it so students serve students and full-time FAS IT employees work with faculty and staff.

Two UAs—who asked that their names not be printed because they were told by FAS IT not to speak to the press and did not want to damage their chances for potential future employment—said that multiple students at the meeting said they would have better understood the reductions had they been part of fiscal cutbacks.

“I came away thinking that it was budgetary but that someone higher up had told them that they needed to say it wasn’t budgetary,” one UA said.

FAS IT—which currently employs 50 UAs—currently plans to offer 15 to 17 students jobs for next year. Eventually, they plan hire up to 8 more students for the year, Selsby wrote in the e-mail.

According to one UA, students were told at the meeting that factors relating to their job attendance and performance would be taken into account when making employment cut decisions.

Selsby added that FAS IT will be hiring additional students to assist on special projects throughout the year.

In addition to cutting back on student employees, FAS IT has eliminated the position of student supervisor—responsible for helping UAs address difficult concerns—transferring their responsibilities to full-time FAS IT employees and grad students who are trained in the same skills as full-time staff.

Both students said that most UAs did not support this change because full-time employees are less accessible and said they found it easier to approach a student for help rather than a full-time employee.

UAs will continue to work at the FAS IT Help Desk—which will now close at 8 p.m. rather than 10 p.m.—and the Science Center’s basement computer clinic but will no longer answer phone concerns or work at the branch in William James Hall.

On Tuesday, current UAs being offered jobs for the fall were sent an e-mail by FAS IT Supervisor of Student Computing Support Jamesley Dasse and Manager of Student Computing Support Lisa Duhaime asking to meet with them within the next two days.

Students who were under consideration to fill the other spots were also sent e-mails by Dasse and Duhaime asking to meet with them over the next week.

Those who did not receive either of the two e-mails learned at the meeting yesterday that their jobs had been cut.

Last month, when FAS IT cut the Science Center’s computer clinic’s weekend hours, Selsby told The Crimson that the cuts in weekend hours did not result from FAS’s economic woes. He said that the UA program remained high among FAS IT’s priorities as the department considered the program a cost-saving measure in itself and that FAS IT might actually see a trend of increased student employment as a result of the economic crisis.

—Staff writer Lauren D. Kiel can be reached at lkiel@fas.harvard.edu.