As of this month, the campus hall secretary position, or ASA, on the campus of the University of Tennessee has been eliminated.

There were nine total people working as hall secretaries in campus housing, and eight of them have been relocated to other positions on campus, while one decided to retire.

Executive Director of Campus Housing Frank Cuevas said that efficiency with technology was one of the key reasons they decided to do away with the position.

“Because of technology, many of their positions and duties were being rolled over to much more efficient ways of being done with technology,” he said.

Cuevas said that lock changes, swipe cards and hall check-ins could be more efficiently handled with the use of technology, and that they would be able to save money.

Some of the duties that had been previously performed by hall secretaries were being replaced with the new technologies.

“Many of the other duties, as we were introducing new systems technologies, were already being centralized and being done by folks up in the central office and those technologies,” he said.

Cuevas said that he didn’t want to just lay off the workers, but rather give them other job opportunities on campus, and campus housing was willing to help place them in other positions.

“A year ago we notified all the campus housing hall secretaries that their positions were being eliminated,” he said. “So we gave them all 10 months notice. We actually placed them in other positions on campus.”

The usual protocol is a 30-day notice, but the end goal was to give the secretaries ample time to find other job openings and get plugged in, so that they would not have to be laid off.

Many were hired within the offices of student life.

“Over the course of 10 months we told that them we would work with them to find them other positions within the department or on campus,” he said.

Cuevas said that the housing department went through all the appropriate protocol to make sure this situation was handled with care and ethics.

“If you are going to eliminate a position, it requires human resources, approval by the chief business officer of the institution, the chief human resource officer, and essentially the chancellor has to sign off on it,” Cuevas said, “because you have to show adequate reason and why.”

While technology was a main reason for the elimination of jobs, Cuevas said that he’s pleased with finding jobs for the workers in other parts of campus. Their goal was met and the workers were pleased with the end result.

“Other places are ethically only required to give them 30 days and we gave our folks 10 months, because we felt with more notice we could work towards helping them get a place somewhere on our campus,” he said. “And that was all along our goal is to try and get them somewhere else so they wouldn’t be affected as a layoff. I’m happy to report that we got them all placed. That was our end goal and of course they were happy as well.”