As of Oct. 10, Student Affairs has fired the remaining 10 members of Mercury management for striking, flouting the termination processes outlined in the Student Media Bylaws by saying the management members had voluntarily quit despite management members never stating such intent.
The Mercury’s strike began Sept. 14 in response to former Editor-in-Chief Gregorio Olivares Gutierrez’s termination a day prior. On Sept. 16, Student Media Director Lydia Lum sent an email to the 10 remaining stipend employees of The Mercury, known as the management team, informing them that their “continued participation with The Mercury” and “eligibility for the privileges associated with [their] positions” would be evaluated in a meeting of the Student Media Operating Board. Lum did not specify when this meeting would occur. Student Affairs administrators or SMOB members did not reach out to any Mercury management members regarding a meeting following Lum’s email.
The first notification Mercury management members received of their removal from their positions was on Oct. 1, when all members of former Mercury management, excluding Managing Editor Maria Shaikh and Olivares, received an email from Student Affairs Business Manager Christine Belcher requesting they return 42.4% of the money payroll had issued to them that day. Each email said payroll was informed as part of a “Statement of facts” that the student’s “Student Media assignment has ended effective 09/17/2024” and that they “were overpaid for the pay period of 09/17-09/30.” The message concluded with a request for authorization, an agreement with the statement of facts and a signature.
Avery Bainbridge, a math senior and undergraduate voting member of SMOB, said that after the removal of Olivares, he had not received any messages from Lum in her capacity as SMOB chair until he was notified of the Oct. 10 SMOB meeting. Bainbridge said he was not aware of the Sept. 16 email from Lum or the Oct. 1 email from Belcher, and that neither the meeting to evaluate management members’ continued participation nor the firing notice from payroll were brought up during the Oct. 10 SMOB meeting. Bainbridge said he was surprised by the hasty way the Oct. 10 meeting, intended to be a “regular” meeting, was arranged.
“There was no scheduling process,” Bainbridge said. “We were told this is when the meeting will be. We were given a day, we were given a time and we were given a sandwich order form which was to be the means consent was collected for this gathering.”
Lum said that after the Sept. 16 email she sent to students, she had been left in the dark regarding how the special SMOB meeting for evaluating Mercury management would be arranged.
“I honestly don’t know when the special meeting will be,” Lum said. “I know there is a SMOB board meeting on Oct. 10. People with a higher pay [rate] than I said, ‘Convene a meeting,’ so I said, ‘Okay, when?’ They said, ‘Soon.’ I checked with a couple people and chose [Oct. 10]. Statistically speaking, some of the student members were probably going to have class at that time.”
Lum said that she was waiting for more information regarding the next steps regarding Mercury management’s employment and payment, but that she had thus far been met with “crickets.”
“What I can tell you [about the payroll emails] is that the powers that be have not told me what is next,” Lum said. “I can’t even tell you [if] it’s confidential FERPA information because I don’t know what is next.”
Mercury management members responded to Belcher’s email by contesting the statement of facts and its legal weight as they had not received prior communications about being fired or removal of pay until after the payment had been disbursed Oct. 1. In an email sent to the newly fired members of Mercury management on Oct. 9, Jenni Huffenberger, senior director of marketing and student media, said the employment of management members ended effective Sept. 16 because they had stopped completing work for The Mercury.
“It is important to note that no administrator took any action to remove you from your position,” Huffenberger said in her email to Sultana. “Rather, your actions and declarations demonstrated you abandoned your position as a student staff member of The Mercury beginning on Sept. 17. In short, you quit. As a result, you become ineligible to receive a stipend.”
Mercury management members continued distributing newspapers in the Student Union until papers ran out in late September, The Mercury’s Instagram remained active until Sept. 20 and Lum continued requesting Shaikh perform Mercury management tasks as late as Oct. 3.
Section 2.9(c) of the Student Media Bylaws, which contains provisions for removing student employees from their positions, says if there is evidence that a Student Media member has been negligent in their duties, then the senior D\director and director of student media have final say on their employment together. Section 2.9(f) says that “removal of any student media management from their duties shall require a majority vote of voting members of the [SMOB] board.” Lum said that she did not partake in this decision, as would be required per the language of section 2.9(c), and Bainbridge said that no vote has taken place. The Retrograde reached out to SMOB members Janet Johnson, Kevin Sweet and Yash Thakkar, all of whom did not respond for comment.
“To speak frankly, there are no votes or opinions that I am being asked to make as a member of this board,” Bainbridge said. “In fact, at one point, it was claimed by Jenni Huffenberger that the board does not deal with employment matters, which is confusing as a board member who has read the bylaws. We do handle employment matters and disciplinary matters. The one decision we have made so far was a disciplinary employment matter.”
Bainbridge said no time was allocated to discuss anything regarding The Mercury’s strike or the creation of The Retrograde during the Oct. 10 meeting. Bainbridge said it was clear Huffenberger and Lum did not want to speak about the matter in any depth. After repeated questioning from Bainbridge regarding the employment status of Mercury management, Huffenberger said that, in her view and the view of a lawyer, Mercury management had quit. Bainbridge said that at no point was the board provided with the opinion of the lawyer, the name of the lawyer or the evidence they had used to come to their opinion.
“I asked if they told her that they quit or if they provided notice in writing that they resigned from their positions,” Bainbridge said. “[I asked], ‘Did you ever have a conversation with them in which they said the words, “I quit”?’ And the response was ‘No.’ Multiple times, [Huffenberger] kept saying that there was ‘no problem here.’ She said that … the normal disciplinary process used by SMOB would not apply since these people were not terminated, they quit. That was what was eventually communicated to us, and it took a very long time to get to that point.”
Bainbridge said that Huffenberger and Lum had not been forthcoming with information, details or evidence for any of the decisions they were making outside of SMOB. Bainbridge said he did not understand what role the bylaws and policy played in Student Media if Student Affairs ignored them circumstantially, which causes a chilling effect on campus because of the lack of transparency from campus administrators in their decision-making processes, particularly when it directly impacts students.
“I think that they should try to give all of these people a fair hearing, to explicitly involve the board in these matters, even if they believe that the board is not strictly necessary under their interpretations of the bylaws,” Bainbridge said. “I think that this is what they can do to help their image a little bit. We have this Office of Student Affairs, but where is the student part of it?”
Bainbridge said he was also concerned about the effect the mass firings will have on the remaining groups under Student Media, especially the next time a clash with administration occurs, since the people charged with handling it don’t appear to be on the side of students.
Other Student Media groups are already facing pressure in the wake of the Mercury firings. Senior members of RadioUTD and members who also worked for The Mercury are being prohibited from attending the upcoming College Broadcasters Incorporated convention, and UTD TV’s attendance at this weekend’s Amarillo International Film Festival was limited because of requiring students fly to the event instead of carpooling as originally planned.
“Is what we have even for students anymore?” Bainbridge said. “It certainly isn’t by students.”
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An Interview with Gregorio Olivares Gutierrez of The Retrograde – Gateway Journalism Review
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