The Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences laid off 162 employees Friday morning in a departmental restructuring, according to an email sent by Dean James Bullock. The layoffs encapsulated “nearly all” academic support staff, according to his email. 

Bullock wrote that Dornsife did not expect to lay off any more staff positions. The layoffs were first reported by Morning, Trojan. 

According to the email, laid off staff will be given preference to fill the 115 roles that will make up the downsized department. The preference will not be extended to 41 staff members who were laid off in September from Dornsife administration and institutes, but they may still apply to unfilled positions after the initial rehiring according to the email. 

Jonah Cano, a student services associate for Dornsife’s mathematics department, was one of the laid-off staff members. Cano said he had heard that the majority of layoffs had been completed and assumed his job was safe until the Viterbi School of Engineering announced it was laying off all its academic advisors in early October as part of departmental restructuring, according to Annenberg Media reporting. 

When Cano got an email requesting his presence at a restructuring Zoom call, he suspected he was about to lose his job. 

“It’s the middle of the semester. We thought we were fine,” Cano said. “We got an email about the restructuring … because of what happened at Viterbi, we were like, ‘Okay, yeah, this might be the writing on the wall.’”

According to Bullock’s email, Dornsife’s restructured model will include separate “centralized hubs” for undergraduate student advising, master’s program support and academic and research facilities. Each of Dornsife’s divisions — humanities, social sciences, life sciences, and physical and mathematical sciences — will also get its own hub. 

“An important goal of this reorganization is to manage our budget reduction in a way that allows all departments, including our small but impactful units, to maintain their academic integrity and self-direction while continuing to provide a high level of student support and advising that is balanced across the College,” Bullock wrote in his email.

Cano said he was worried that a more centralized model would result in new staff being trained too broadly, preventing students from receiving tailored assistance. 

Cano helps handle D-Clearance for Dornsife students.He said that as a first-generation student and a 2023 alum, he understood how confusing the D-clearance process could be and that he carefully considered each individual request.

“I was doing weekly meetings with the advisors, and we would go case by case with all the students,” Cano said. “To treat the advisors and all the [student facing] admins like this, it doesn’t help the students.”

Bullock’s email asked staff to work for the next 60 days before their positions are terminated. According to Cano, laid-off staff have 10 days to indicate that they would like to be considered for a new position at Dornsife. Cano described the atmosphere among staff as “bleak” as employees determine what choice they will make.

“One of my coworkers has been at USC for 30 plus years. They haven’t updated their resume in 30 plus years because they didn’t really need to,” Cano said. “Now they have 10 days to decide if they want to keep working for the university that cut them, or if they want to move on.”

In the email, Bullock wrote he acknowledged that the speed at which layoffs were decided made it difficult for administration to directly engage with the academic support staff and that he sympathized with laid off staff.

“While many universities are considering cutting entire departments and programs, particularly in the humanities, we at Dornsife firmly believe that providing students with broad and deep educational opportunities across the liberal arts is essential to their preparation as society’s future leaders,” Bullock wrote.

Cano intended to get his master’s degree at USC at a reduced price through USC’s Tuition Assistance Benefit program, which allows full-time, benefit-eligible staff to earn a USC degree without the cost of tuition. Now, he is debating whether to reapply for a position at all.

“We weren’t the ones that started the financial crisis. So, who’s to say that this won’t happen again if we do go into another financial crisis, that they would just cut the bottom line and do it all over again,” Cano said. “It just feels like a big betrayal of trust.”