Several students gathered around a table in the Native American Student and Community Center (NASCC) during the winter term to express their concerns about the facility’s handling in recent times.
“I felt catfished because I’m a transfer student. I come from out of state, and I saw on the NASCC website this beautiful building… So much programming, so many resources, so many clubs. Some of those don’t even exist anymore,” a student said, wishing to remain confidential.
Another student echoed these feelings: “The NASCC used to be open until, like, 2 or 3 a.m. They would be here all night… Now we can only enter during business operating hours. We get locked out. We can’t be here. There’s no one to manage it. A lot of the time, it’s just completely empty.”
The students were particularly concerned about a recent reduction in the building’s operating hours, which saw multiple days cut from its weekly schedule for over six months.
According to professional staff at the NASCC, the center was projected to earn approximately $40,000 in revenue due to venue rentals last year, although departmental oversights resulted in only about $2,000 being collected.
This financial shortfall reportedly led to staff reductions, long-term vacancies in critical positions, reduced operating hours, and increased responsibilities for student workers. Global Diversity and Inclusion (GDI), the NASCC’s supervising department, provided contrasting explanations for these issues.
Jay Molnar, the Program Coordinator for the NASCC who has held the position for three years, described how the problems began at the start of the academic year during a team meeting with GDI.
“They called that at the beginning of the year, and just kind of told us, this is the situation…[the NASCC] is a revenue generating building…” Molnar explained, detailing the center’s role in collecting revenues from outside organizations that rent the building.
Molnar stated, “The only responsibility they have is to send out invoices after events. Once the invoices are out, they have no authority to follow up.”
Despite sending out invoices, the revenue collected was far below projections.
“Apparently only $2,000 worth of that was paid,” Molnar said, emphasizing the confusion surrounding how this financial error occurred.
Molnar voiced these concerns during the public comment section at the Board of Trustees’ January meeting, noting that the board had not been aware of the center’s struggles.
“I know for a fact after I spoke to the Board of Trustees about this particular issue that they not only hadn’t heard about it, but they also didn’t know about any of the other struggles going on, like for the center or within GDI,” Molnar said.
On April 11, following up on the April Board of Trustees meeting, an email from Board of Trustees Chair Benjamin Berry addressed concerns about the reduced staffing at the NASCC.
Berry stated, “I have asked for a deeper review of these topics to better understand the issues that were shared, and while I cannot provide an update at this time, I am looking into these concerns.”
Araceli Cruz, one of the current Associate Vice Presidents of GDI responsible for overseeing the NASCC, acknowledged the long-term vacancy of the building manager position during a previous interview with PSU Vanguard.
This critical role had been left unfilled since the previous manager’s resignation at the end of the Spring term of the previous year.
Cruz explained that the vacancy was intentional due to university-wide budget cuts, claiming, “The position is vacant, but we are hiring an interim… because of the budget cuts, the NASCC was also impacted, just like across the institution.
So we did have to leave the position vacant for six months to allow for some salary savings that we needed to meet… so it is taking a little bit longer to post.”
Molnar, however, stated that they never received an explanation for the prolonged vacancy, adding that GDI had claimed efforts were being made to fill the position.
No other staff or students interviewed reported hearing this explanation but believed the position was supposed to be filled permanently by January.
Molnar further alleged that GDI had stated in the same meeting that building hours were being reduced to save on utility costs, particularly for electricity and HVAC systems.
“They should have been honest and been like, we can’t afford to pay enough student workers to keep it open every day of the week instead of ‘we need to shut off the electricity and HVAC,’” Molnar said.
When Cruz was asked whether the shortfall existed, she did not confirm it directly but provided information on a list of pending invoices addressed regularly and the challenges faced with external payments.
Cruz mentioned, “Currently, payments for external users are primarily accepted by check, which has presented some logistical challenges.
A new campus-wide system is in development that will enable credit card payments, significantly improving the efficiency and timeliness of the payment process.”
Cruz declined to comment when asked for clarification on her statements regarding salary savings.
In a follow-up letter from GDI Vice President Ame Lambert, it was stated, “It is no secret that PSU has had to pull on a variety of levers to help close its budget deficit… One of the levers to address the deficit now includes attributing a certain amount of salary savings to each unit… We only had two open positions on general funds this fiscal year: the NASCC manager and an Investigator position… So we made the difficult decision to hold them both open…”
Students expressed concerns regarding the relocation of professional staff to Smith Memorial Student Union during most of the week.
Molnar indicated that they previously worked at Smith one day a week, spending two days remote and two days in the NASCC.
Current arrangements require Molnar to be at the NASCC only one day per week while returning to Smith after 5 p.m. on most days.
On the issue of staff relocations, Cruz explained, “More of the student traffic is happening in Smith, so we adjusted the schedule so now every professional staff has just one day in the office… then they support students back in Smith, because that’s where they need to be… We wanted to support students in a more holistic way, and because the need is over there in Smith right now, we needed to ensure that we also had staff supporting students there.”
However, students raised significant concerns about the impacts of relocating indigenous staff on their community.
“Our resources are being relocated, which I feel is very insensitive to our students, who do have a very close connection with culture, and a sense of relocation is a very traumatizing thing to have to be reintroduced to,” said a student who wished to remain confidential.
Molnar echoed these sentiments, explaining that the presence of a native authority figure is crucial for students.
“The students are like, we don’t feel comfortable being there unless there’s a native authority figure there,” Molnar stated.
This is not the first instance of staff relocation at the NASCC that has faced community and staff disapproval.
A source revealed a letter of correspondence detailing a similar situation from 2013 when the University was dealing with a $15 million shortfall, prompting leadership to propose tuition hikes and faculty terminations.
The letter was addressed to former University President Wim Wiewel and signed by Jackie Leno Grant, Chair of the Oregon Indian Coalition on Post-Secondary Education, expressing how changes made without consultation sent a message that the educational needs of tribal students and communities were not valued.
This backlash reportedly led the University to allow the individual in the position at that time to allocate more hours back at the NASCC.
Trevor Roberts, the last person to hold the permanent building manager position, resigned at the end of Spring 2024 due to the challenging working conditions and mental fatigue he experienced in the role.
“I like to joke about how it always felt like I walked into a burning building and I was given like a super soaker,” Roberts remarked.
While he did not wish to provide specifics, he confirmed that mental health and the pressures of the role contributed significantly to his resignation.
“I just had to get out because my mental health was suffering,” Roberts stated.
“I was not sleeping. It was just a lot of stress and a lot of pressure, and I just had to kind of step away from that… I was sad to leave the role and being able to work with my community… [but] I do feel like it was the best decision I made at that time.”
Roberts shared similar concerns regarding management at the middle administrative level, believing that GDI hired an improperly qualified candidate for the Assistant Vice President position, thus complicating his responsibilities.
“There was a lot of learning time and a learning curve that just made my job a lot harder… there was not enough me, and there was not enough time in the day to handle all the building’s needs, like I had been for the past year and a half,” Roberts stated.
Both Cruz and Molnar acknowledged that student-workers heavily supported the facility during this tumultuous period, but their views on the conditions differed.
Cruz remarked, “I think it’s always challenging when you do have a vacancy because you do need someone to be there, and so I think that can sometimes be hard, but I know that we have a great group of work-study students who are also supporting us.”
Conversely, Molnar contended that working conditions were unfair to student-workers.
“The NASCC closes at five,” Molnar explained.
“However, the student groups usually have their meetings from five to seven over there, so someone has to be there. So since I’m not there, it ends up being like the one student worker who doesn’t get paid overtime is kind of forced to be there.”
Students emphasized the dedication of their peers, stating that they felt overwhelmed with their responsibilities but wanted to ensure the center remained available for future cohorts.
“I’m just very proud of all of the students that are here and the fight that we have had to continue—to make sure that there’s something for the next cohort to walk into,” said a student who wished to remain confidential.
“Maybe it’s something less and less, but we just want to make sure that there’s something here.”
On March 20, there was an incident in which an unhoused individual attempted to access the building through the lower-level entrance.
The individual appeared to be mentally unwell, banging on doors and shouting requests for entry.
Cruz was present in her office but did not exit to address the situation, and ultimately, a student inside the center approached the individual.
That student was not an employee and had not received any conflict resolution or de-escalation training, but they were able to de-escalate the situation peacefully.
PSU Vanguard was present at the time of this event and witnessed the incident.
As of April 3, an interim building manager was hired at the NASCC, and building hours were restored to 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., Monday through Friday.
No formal announcements were made regarding these changes.
image source from：https://psuvanguard.com/staff-say-38k-in-uncollected-revenue-led-to-cuts-at-native-student-center/
