Karen swings the axe. Again.

Karen Halbersleben, the president of Northland College, announced more staff cuts at a mandatory staff and faculty meeting at the college Friday morning.

Halbersleben said that Mary Rehwald (coordinator of the College's Life-long Learning Center), Susan Hall (coordinator of both the College's Arts & Letters series and its Wild Careers program for high school students, Jennifer Honl-Compton (coordinator of the College's Information Desk, Alvord Theatre Crew and Facilities Reservation Program), and Gerald Bruno (the College's risk assesor) were let go by the college on Thursday to "remove redundancies and improve communication."

Hall said that she and Rehwald had less than a day's notice that their positions at the College had ended. The College also plans to remove up to seven faculty positions through attrition.

End journalism, begin commentary

1. Karen, what the hell did you do? Is swinging the axe the only way you can think to solve a budget problem? And for crying out loud, if you're going to swing it, at least be decent to the people you're firing. Tell them how much you appreciate them and what it's meant to you working with them for the past couple years. In less, of course, you really don't care about your people. In which case, kudos to you for being honest and straightforward and doing your job without all those messy feelings getting in the way.
2. Again to Karen: You don't have to take care of your people. There are plenty of folks out there who are just dying for a chance to work long, unpredictable hours for pay that while not *so* bad for around here, is pathetic in the general scheme of things, as well as for supervisors who apparently don't recognize or choose not to reward creative and critical thought. Just remember, while you may be the master of the ship, I defy you to sail it by yourself.
3. To The Press: You know, you really missed an opportunity on Friday. The president of the *only* four-year college within 70 miles breaks her promise from almost exactly two years ago to not to fire any more employees to solve the college's budget woes (which they have in the first place because of crappy recruiting, but you don't see any of those strategies changing, do you?), and there's nothing about that but plenty of fluff about pumpkin carving on campus? What was that?

I guess I'm pretty dissapointed by this whole thing; that Karen would can more people after promising not to, and that the paper would let it slide. Oooof dah!