Was there a better solution to the WVU furloughs?

To say it could be worse sounds … callous. Heartless, even. It’s hard to balance pragmatism and compassion, because to acknowledge one seems like a dismissal of the other. But we’re going to try.

Pragmatically, the furloughs at WVU could be worse. Of 6,000 benefit-eligible employees in Morgantown, only
795 business and auxiliary staff will be out of work — until June 28 or July 26 at the latest. Less than one-sixth of workers. And high-wage employees, such as President Gee, Coach Brown and Coach Huggins, are taking voluntary pay cuts to help offset the deficit caused by the pandemic.

Compassionately, that’s 795 of our neighbors who are suddenly without work. We don’t know who among them were living paycheck-to-paycheck. Who was the primary — if not the sole — breadwinner of their families. Who has debts and expenses that will only get worse without an income. Who is facing down despair and anxiety as their personal life becomes even more uncertain in an already tumultuous world.

The grand scheme — which all its numbers and figures and analyses — can be cold, impersonal. But we need the big picture to keep the world in perspective, to show us that things aren’t that bad. That things could be worse.

But we also can’t forget the “big picture” is a tapestry made up of individual threads, where each thread is a real person living a real life. And each of those people matter. Each of us matters. Our lives are interconnected in ways we may never realize, and someone else’s personal hardship may have a ripple effect in our own life, though we probably won’t ever know it.

With that in mind, we would like to applaud WVU staff who took voluntary pay cuts and made financial gifts to the university. We would like to thank WVU timing furloughs so that impacted workers can receive the extra $600 a month in unemployment benefits and setting specific dates for returning to work, so employees aren’t stuck in limbo.

But we wonder if maybe there were better solutions.

Multiple WVU officials have said this past week that renovations to buildings and athletic facilities will continue as scheduled. The Coliseum is getting new seats and a new scoreboard. Milan Puskar Stadium is getting renovated, including a new scoreboard. WVU is building an Olympic sports weight room. Improvements to Hodges Hall and construction of Reynolds Hall will go on.

We understand that money has been “earmarked,” as Shane Lyons said. Some of it was gifted from donors for a specific purpose. But is it really impossible to re-appropriate that money? There’s absolutely no way to channel those funds toward maintaining WVU’s personnel — their “talent” as President Gee has said in the past — instead of objects? Can donors not be called and asked if their financial gifts — even just a fraction — can be redirected to keeping a fellow Mountaineer employed during a time of economic instability?

We just don’t understand why funds aren’t going to help people. After all, what use are newly renovated facilities if there’s no one to fill them?