AMHERST — It has been a rocky few weeks at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
First came news of a cocaine sting in the Hotel UMass, the esteemed hospitality training hotel located in the Campus Center smack dab in the middle of campus.
Then a massive fire ripped through Olympia Place, a privately owned apartment complex across the street from the university, displacing 230 students.
And on Thursday, hundreds of members of the Professional Staff Union flooded Chancellor Javier Reyes’s office to “cordially invite” him to a no-confidence vote in his leadership scheduled for early next month.
All this amid changing federal policies and funding cuts that have forced the state’s premier public research university and flagship campus to batten down against stiff financial headwinds.
Some of the choppiness on campus is to be expected: Union tensions are reaching a boiling point after more than 500 days of bargaining, and staffers ranging from academic advisers to psychologists to IT support are feeling overworked, underpaid, and undervalued.
The magnitude of the Olympia Place fire, however, was a shock to the system and has sent the university into 24-hour emergency mode, reminding at least one administrator of the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. And not many people could have foreseen a drug bust involving a former governor’s aide who once directed the campus hotel.
“I wouldn’t be surprised if there were alligators in the UMass hotel at this point,” said Alexis Ali, a writer and editor for UMass Magazine.
Though Reyes is not a member of the bargaining team, union members blame him for stymying the process and preventing them from getting cost-of-living adjustments, like other state workers, to meet rising inflation.
The no-confidence vote is scheduled for Dec. 3, and it’s not the first in his bumpy tenure.
Appointed in 2023 on the recommendation of UMass president Marty Meehan, Reyes was formally inaugurated in April 2024, one month before a police crackdown on pro-Palestinian protesters on campus, triggering student government and faculty groups to call for his resignation following no-confidence votes in his leadership.
On Thursday, armed with protest signs and bullhorns, around 300 demonstrators rallied outside his office in Whitmore Hall to chant: “Reyes, Reyes, whaddya know? Fair contract or you gotta go!”
“Where’s Reyes?” demanded one demonstrator in the line of people heading upstairs to his office to deliver the invitations. Reyes was not there when they arrived. “He’s off-campus, I’m sure.”
Emily Gest, a spokesperson for UMass Amherst, said Reyes has “been focused on ensuring we are efficiently delivering the necessary services to support our students impacted by the fire,” and that he was in the office Thursday for a Faculty Senate meeting.
“While the day-to-day negotiating sessions are handled by a dedicated team of professional labor negotiators,” she said, “the Chancellor receives regular updates and provides input in accordance with the process established by Massachusetts labor laws.”
It’s not just the contract, though. Many students, staff, and faculty are still incensed about Reyes’s decision to direct police to clear an encampment resulting in the arrests of some 130 pro-Palestinian protesters.
After the no-confidence votes, the news emerged that Reyes was looking into another job, as president of West Virginia University.
For some staffers, the stalled contract coupled with the aftermath of the fire has led to a perfect storm of exhaustion. On Thursday before the rally, Hannah Bernhard, program manager for student success communications, staffed a table at the university’s Emergency Resource Center, she said, “trying to direct students to basic-needs resources and emotional and spiritual support.”
The irony, Bernhard said, is that some of the same staffers who have been working around the clock to help after “this traumatic crisis that 230 students experienced” are struggling themselves.
“It’s getting more and more difficult as we forgo things like child care, health care, car repairs in order to try to feed ourselves and make rent,” said Bernhard, who lives in Northampton. “I see less money in my paychecks now because parking premiums have gone up on campus, as have health insurance premiums, and it got to the point where I was choosing between food and keeping the lights on.”
In September, UMass Amherst partnered with the Amherst Survival Center to open a campus food pantry. Bernhard has gone several times to stock up on protein, fresh produce, canned tomatoes, and rice.
“I can’t tell you the insult it is, to spend six years working a full-time state position” and to still need the food pantry, Bernhard said outside the chancellor’s office, where a bobblehead doll in his likeness stood in the window.
Jeff Hescock, the university’s executive director of environmental health and safety and emergency management, underscored that navigating the recent spate of challenges on a 1,400-acre campus that maintains 350-plus buildings and serves 31,000 students requires a team effort. “We are a city, you know what I mean?” he said.
Hescock said he considered himself a partner to the administration in anticipating and handling difficulties that arise.
“The cocaine thing for sure is not normal,” he said. “And the fire, I would say, to the level of that impact, is not normal, either. But it’s about being prepared to respond to these emergencies.”
Governor Maura Healey’s former aide in Western Massachusetts, LaMar Cook, was arrested in Springfield last month, after investigators intercepted two suspicious packages at the Hotel UMass found to contain around 13 kilograms, or nearly 29 pounds, of suspected cocaine. Security footage caught Cook picking up the packages at the building’s loading dock, according to the arrest report, the details of which emerged earlier this month.
Then the fire happened Nov. 7.
Reyes sent a letter to the campus community Nov. 10 outlining the university’s “next phase of recovery,” including mobilizing an Emergency Resource Center and spreading awareness about a Student Care & Emergency Response Fund, which has collected $226,000 so far to expedite assistance for Olympia Place residents. Reyes visited with families and students in the resource center Saturday and Wednesday.
“On Saturday, when I spent time with Olympia Place residents and their families,” Reyes wrote, “it was clear just how profound the financial, academic, and emotional toll of this fire has been.”
On Thursday afternoon, Hescock sat in a café outside a two-day resource fair the university set up in the Honors College building to help students who lost everything in the blaze.
Some students and parents have been searching frantically for housing, even creating GoFundMe pages to raise money for all kinds of unforeseen expenses, from rent deposits to new wardrobes.
The university drew up to 10 landlords per day to the resource fair, hoping to connect with students who need long-term housing, said Hescock.
UMass has also connected students with free dining hall passes, on-campus housing contacts, and loaner laptops. It is directing affected students to the New2U thrift store on campus, where they can use $100 vouchers for household goods and get unlimited access to clothing and toiletries, and its Office of Global Affairs is helping international students with documentation needs, providing copies of previous I-20 forms, passports, and F-1 visa stamps.
Salvation Army workers stopped by the fair to distribute $100 vouchers for Walmart and for a thrift store, and Red Cross volunteers offered a listening ear.
On Thursday, Shira Stern, from Lenox, was among those volunteers in red — the lead for “disaster spiritual care” in the state, she said. She’s been encouraging students to share their stories, to connect with people so they know they’re not alone.
“We pray with people if they choose,” she said, noting some students they’ve met “have no family here in the United States, and so their feeling of aloneness is so acute.”
The recovery group gave students $350 gift certificates to replace items they lost, she said. “So it gives them an opportunity to get back on their feet.”
She noted they also provide basic items, like blankets, “because when you lose everything, even having one thing to hold on to makes you feel like you are not altogether bereft.”
Brooke Hauser can be reached at brooke.hauser@globe.com. Follow her @brookehauser.