According to her Letter to the Editor—published in the Nov. 5 issue of The Miscellany News—President Catharine Bond Hill has promised to take a five percent pay cut from her salary during the 2010-11 academic year. Hill wrote the Letter in response to the Nov. 1 Staff Editorial from Miscellany’s Editorial Board (“As a symbolic act, if nothing else, senior officers must reconsider pay cut,” 10.29.09).
Though Hill still stressed the value of competitive compensation and her philosophy against across-the-board cuts, she still explained that “the key point made in the Oct. 29 editorial is that the symbolism of a voluntary pay cut on the part of the leader of the institution would be ‘meaningful’ to the community, not as a solution to our difficulties but as a sign that I understand that sacrifices are being made everywhere, and that such a cut would be perceived differently by the community than the private giving that the leadership of the College has undertaken this year.”
Hill continued, saying that while she and the senior officers have already made sacrifices for the community—including substantial gifts to the Vassar College Annual Fund—she would “as President of the College and a member of [the] community, reduce my current salary next year by five percent to signal—to symbolize—that everyone is sacraficing at this moment in our College’s history.”
Click here to read more of Hill’s letter or here to read Features Editor Emma Carmichael’s article on pay cuts at Vassar and at peer schools.
