Last week, AWP ran a news story on the firing of the staffs of not only the university press but also the multicultural center and the performing arts center, E.J. Thomas Hall, at the University of Akron. Since that news spread, many supporters of these institutions have raised concerns and expressed outrage about these actions to University of Akron President Scott Scarborough and the Board of Trustees.

A petition to reinstate the university press on Change.org has been started by writer John Repp. Support has also been passed along Twitter using the hashtag #SaveUAkronPress.

This action by the university administration is very similar to the fiasco at the University of Missouri in 2012, when the newly hired president shut down its university press and then had to reinstate it due to outside pressure.

AWP asked the university for comment on these actions, specifically on whether or not current books under contract by the press would be honored and if the president had any plans to adjust his salary (more than twice the amount that was earned by the three university staff together) to assist in ameliorating the current debt crisis at the university. Director of Media Relations Dan Minnich responded with a statement by Lawrence Burns, Vice President for Advancement: “The operations of University Press are being transferred to the Division of Libraries, where the director will work with the interim dean of Libraries and the Provost to assess Press operations and recommend priorities going forward. It is anticipated that books under contract will be completed. Proposals under review or consideration for publication will be evaluated.”

AWP supports the University of Akron Press and sent the following letter to the university’s president:

July 31, 2015

President Scott Scarborough
The University of Akron
Office of the President
Akron, OH 44325

Dear President Scarborough:

The board of trustees of the Association of Writers & Writing Programs is deeply concerned with the recent decision by your office and the University of Akron’s Board of Trustees to fire the staff of the University of Akron Press. We were more alarmed to learn of the subsequent decision to then reinstitute the press as part of an understaffed library system, but without the editorial leadership that built and sustained a nationally recognized press. To make such a drastic change without retaining key staff members of a flourishing press seems to be, at the very least, bad business.

The University of Akron Press has long been regarded as one of the premier presses in the field of poetry and poetic criticism. Its national reputation has garnered a wide and devoted following in classrooms and in the literary world at large. It has published acclaimed authors such as Beckian Fritz-Goldberg, John Gallaher, Alison Pelegrin, Brittany Cavallaro, Brian Brodeur, and Oliver de la Paz. Additionally, the University of Akron Press publishes a robust catalog of locally and regionally focused works through their Ohio History and Culture series and its Ohio Politics series. These regional works are books that would not otherwise be published via trade publishers, meaning potentially losing emerging voices in the world’s literary conversation.

The University of Akron Press helps enrich the intellectual life of a university while it contributes to the culture at large; and it does so at a fraction of the cost of a sports program, for example. We assert that a press is directly tied to the educational mission of the university through its academic, artistic, historic, and intellectual endeavors. Additionally, AWP has long noted the presence of a major press on campus that is directly connected to an academic program is a best practice followed by the most elite writing programs in the nation.

We, at AWP, urge you to reinstate the Press Director, Thomas Bacher, and the staff of the University of Akron Press. We ask that you allow the press to resume its normal operations and continued contribution to the international literary community. If there is any way that I or members of the AWP board can facilitate such a discussion, we would be glad to do so.

Sincerely,

Dr. Bonnie Culver
Chair of the Board of Trustees