MIDDLEBURY — Faculty at Middlebury College on Thursday will hold a protest and “Walkout to defend Middlebury.” The move comes about a month after college officials announced new limits on employee benefits and other steps the institution will take to address an anticipated $14.1 million deficit this fiscal year.

The planned Thursday protest brings a crescendo to efforts by Middlebury faculty over the past month to push back against the changes in employee benefits.

Those measures were detailed in an April 2 letter to the college community signed by Interim President Steve Snyder, Executive Vice President and Provost Michelle McCauley and Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer David Provost.

Administrators in the letter offered some context on the deficit and progress that’s been made with the budget gap. They also outlined five measures the college will take as the start of its “plan for financial viability,” which were aimed at helping bring expenses in line with revenues and expected to achieve over $10 million in savings.

Those measures were offering a retirement incentive for staff in Vermont; reducing rental properties; growing undergraduate enrollment; evaluating health insurance options; and capping the college’s retirement match at 11%.

Like many employers, the college matches employee contributions into the retirement savings up to a certain level. Starting next January the highest the college contribution will be an 11% match for retirement, down from a top level of 15%, the letter states.

Middlebury College is the largest employer in Addison County. The institution has around 2,000 employees, including faculty and staff, as well as another 5,000 part-time, short-term student employees and adjunct, according to Associate Vice President for Public Affairs Julia Ferrante.

Incoming Middlebury College President Ian Baucom recently voiced his support for the new measures in April 23 remarks delivered at the Monterey campus of the Middlebury Institute of International Studies and a subsequent letter sent to the college community.

“As members of our Middlebury community have expressed, their cost is real, they affect real lives, but I firmly believe that they come from a deep loyalty to the institution, a sincere desire to avoid the greater human pain of significant layoffs, stabilize a budget in structural deficit, safeguard us as best as possible from the financial threats of this moment, and secure a route to our future,” Baucom said.

The college’s Faculty Council and Middlebury’s chapter of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) last month cosponsored a Sense of the Faculty Motion demanding college officials reverse the compensation cuts and enrollment increase announced on April 2, The Middlebury Campus reported.

A reported 94% of around 200 faculty members at an April 18 plenary faculty meeting voted to pass the motion, according to The Campus.

Twelve senior members of the Middlebury College Economics Department have started a petition to preserve faculty and staff benefits. In an April 17 opinion piece in the Campus, the group pledged not to participate in college-wide events (including commencement) “until the decision has been reversed or a plan to mitigate the damage has been implemented.”

“This is a watershed moment in the college’s history, as it now faces a major crisis of morale of its own doing at the same time that we face external threats to higher education,” they wrote. “If this decision is allowed to stand, and the college does not act swiftly to ‘make whole’ the affected employees and repair the breach of trust, we will not only lose staff and faculty to other employers, but also the hearts of those who stay. Both of these outcomes will have a devastating impact on our students and the entire college community.”

Now, college faculty are organizing a walkout and protest slated for Thursday at 10:30 a.m. on the Old Chapel Quad — the lawn in between Old Chapel (where the president has their office) and the Davis Family Library. One faculty member noted the protest and walkout are to urge college officials to take responsibility for what they believe has been poor fiscal oversight over the past two decades.

They framed recent measures in the larger context of losses experienced since the institution acquired the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey and other impactful financial decisions made over the past 20 years. Those include a workforce planning process that began in 2018 and larger student enrollments in recent years.

Faculty members are expected to deliver the latest faculty motion and the recent petition to Old Chapel at Thursday’s walkout, according to The Campus.