Rally attendees came prepared to speak, regardless of whether the Health Clinic was on the agenda or not. Photo by Collin Orser.
Early May, LCC President Bulger sent a controversial email to employees regarding the potential closing of the Health Clinic by the end of the Fall 2023 term. In response a rally was held on May 3rd at the Board meeting with over 20 students and staff standing in front of the Board to voice their support for the Health Clinic.
President Stephanie Bulger sent out a mass email to LCC students and staff on May 16, about the decision to, “remove the Health Clinic from the Board Work Session agenda.” Bulger will instead be taking a step back to form a group to reevaluate the health clinic, “I am convening a task force of internal stakeholders — students, faculty, classified professionals, and managers — and community partners to review models to expand healthcare services to more students at a low cost while maintaining fiscal sustainability for the services.”
This message came only one day before the next Board Work Session where many were hoping to share more thoughts regarding the Health Clinic as they await the Board’s next move. Students and staff rallied before the May 17 board meeting anyway, with many students ready to make comments regardless of whether or not the council spoke on the topic.
Scooter Milne, the president of the Gender and Sexuality Alliance, did not receive the email directly, they heard about it thanks to a friend. Milne personally feels as if it’s a cop-out and that the committee had already decided to close the Clinic as soon as they first announced it.
Milne feels that there has been no genuine attempts to work with the school at large or try to solve what they claim is simply a “financial problem.” “It seems as if they were trying to quickly shut it down and were only stopped from the backlash received and will just try again once things settle down.”
Milne has lost trust in the administration, they will now “have to take time to specifically watch and attend the board meetings so I can learn what they’re going to try and slip past us next. I would absolutely love to be proven wrong about any and all of this, should there be sufficient evidence.”
As a silver lining, Milne is thankful that many students are still rallying regardless of the president’s announcement.
Hope Scholer, a Student at LCC, felt as if the administration should be more open with both students and faculty regarding the Health Clinic. “Be more honest with faculty and students, because if they aren’t, then what’s the point of anything?”
Student, Andres Rodriguez, was frustrated at the indecisiveness, “The Health Clinic provides aid for educational healthcare, mental health and care for all. Closing the Health Clinic would be incredibly unbeneficial for everyone involved.”
The Lane Community College Employees Federation (LCCEF) was also involved on campus in response to President Bulger’s announcement. The group decided to continue on with the rally despite the President’s choice not to talk about the Health Clinic. LCCEF representatives Vice President of Organizing Colin Vurek and Officer-at-Large Katie Neal were available for comment.
Neal feels the administration is deliberately trying to cut people out of the conversation. Personally, she feels very confused and disappointed by the last council meeting which looked into how many people used the health clinic. The data shown was from a single term: Fall 2022. The presentation states that it only served 6% of the students. Neal comments that this is because Fall 2022 was the first term back after the pandemic where the campus was closed for almost two years. Neal states, “One would expect that the numbers wouldn’t be normal because things were not normal for several years and even now things are still not quite back to normal and it may never be”.
Vurek feels as if the President’s announcement was a ruse to make sure LCCEF does not rally at the meeting. “She thought that she’d take it off and that somehow we’d all go, ‘Oh, we’re safe, we’re safe.’ But if you read into it, the task force is a joke. You can’t get a lot of work done in two and a half to three weeks. There’s lots of data and input that needs to be given by all stakeholders, students, faculty, classified professionals and the community, quite frankly.”
Vurtek believes that the last rally made the board look bad especially after 28 people signed up for public comment in defense of the health clinic, “There has not been that many people doing public comment in years!” she said.
Stay tuned as The Torch follows this story.
