Former Associate Professor of Chinese Xiaoling Shi has filed a “charge of discrimination” against Allegheny College with the United States Equal Employment Opportunity Commission for the circumstances of her termination from the college at the end of 2021-22 academic year.
“As everyone knows, Faculty Council recommended maintaining the Chinese program, but then the decision came to cut the Chinese program,” Shi told The Campus this week. “There was no due process. Also, I didn’t have the opportunity to appeal to a faculty committee, which is the procedure recommended by AAUP.”
The American Association of University Professors is an organization of academics focused on advancing principles of shared governance in academia, as well as other best hiring and termination practices. Under Allegheny’s bylaws, Shi’s status as a tenured professor granted her the right to appeal to the Board of Trustees, who would have final say on the termination.
Shi — the head of the Chinese minor program at Allegheny — was fired as a part of an academic restructuring at the college that cut the Chinese minor along with the film and digital storytelling, geology, and religious studies majors. The changes, initiated by the college’s Board of Trustees, called for an elimination of $1.5 million in faculty salaries to ease a structural deficit, and eliminated 25 faculty positions.
The restructuring, which faced strong opposition by students, began with the creation of a faculty-led academic program review task force. In their report, the task force identified several “programs with challenges to long-term stability,” though the Chinese minor was not among them. Then-Provost and Dean of the College Ron Cole, ’87, used the report to create his staffing plan, which eliminated the Chinese minor among the other programs.
When his staffing plan was announced, Cole said that the termination of the Chinese minor was due to under-enrollment within the program.
“Students were not taking Chinese consistently, particularly at upper levels,” Cole said in a February interview with The Campus. “The (Task Force) report didn’t have details about the number of courses that were under-enrolled or canceled. It didn’t have that fine of detail, only the total enrollments in each major or minor.”
Shi appealed her termination to the Board of Trustees, submitting analyses arguing that the numbers did not support eliminating the Chinese minor. When that appeal was voted down by the Board in late March, Shi filed a charge with the EEOC.
“I firmly, firmly believe that student numbers do not support the decision,” Shi said. “I have to wonder, what is the reason for the termination? I cannot find any other reason than discrimination.”
The EEOC is the federal agency responsible for enforcing the nation’s anti-employment discrimination laws.
After Shi filed her charge in late March, the college had a chance to respond to her charge. Shi recently received that response, and has until Sept. 22 to submit a rebuttal. Once that rebuttal is submitted, the EEOC will step in and attempt to mediate the situation, Shi said. If the charge is not resolved within 180 days, Shi will be able to request a “Right-to-Sue” letter from the EEOC allowing her to file a lawsuit against the college on the basis of discrimination.
Allegheny College did not respond to requests for comments.