WGU Layoffs

[ss20ts]

135,000 students x $3475 x 2 times a year = $938,250,000 a year WGU is taking in. And that $3475 is the cheapest tuition. Most programs are higher so they're really bringing in more $$$. Yet there's layoffs that were mishandled. The whole situation is a disaster. WGU keeps bragging about their number of students. Enrollment is not down. In 2017 there were 83,000 students and there are now 135,000.

They're paying these kinds of salaries:
Scott D Pulsipher PRESIDENT & TRUSTEE 40 $1,092,372
Dr Robert Mendenhall FORMER PRESIDENT 0 $944,495
Marni Baker-Stein CHIEF ACADEMIC OFFICER 40 $505,208
David Grow CHIEF FINANCIAL OFFICER 40 $447,520
Carey Hilderbrand CHIEF MARKETING OFFICER 40 $320,511
Patrick Partridge CHIEF MARKETING OFFICER 40 $306,325
Damien Cooper CHIEF TECHNOLOGY OFFICER 40 $303,839
Bonnie Pattee SR VP, PEOPLE & TALENT 40 $263,609
Melissa Flores VP OF STATE OPERATIONS 40 $261,516
Sarah Demark VP OF PROGRAM DEVELOPMENT 40 $249,762
Jan Jones-Schenk SR VP, COLLEGE 40 $240,905
Deborah Fowler SR VP, STUDENT SUCCESS 40 $216,579

https://nonprofitlight.com/ut/salt-lake-...university

[sacredrain]

135,000 students x $3475 x 2 times a year = $938,250,000 a year WGU is taking in. And that $3475 is the cheapest tuition. Most programs are higher so they're really bringing in more $$$. Yet there's layoffs that were mishandled. The whole situation is a disaster. WGU keeps bragging about their number of students. Enrollment is not down. In 2017 there were 83,000 students and there are now 135,000.

They're paying these kinds of salaries:
Scott D Pulsipher PRESIDENT & TRUSTEE 40 $1,092,372
Dr Robert Mendenhall FORMER PRESIDENT 0 $944,495
Marni Baker-Stein CHIEF ACADEMIC OFFICER 40 $505,208
David Grow CHIEF FINANCIAL OFFICER 40 $447,520
Carey Hilderbrand CHIEF MARKETING OFFICER 40 $320,511
Patrick Partridge CHIEF MARKETING OFFICER 40 $306,325
Damien Cooper CHIEF TECHNOLOGY OFFICER 40 $303,839
Bonnie Pattee SR VP, PEOPLE & TALENT 40 $263,609
Melissa Flores VP OF STATE OPERATIONS 40 $261,516
Sarah Demark VP OF PROGRAM DEVELOPMENT 40 $249,762
Jan Jones-Schenk SR VP, COLLEGE 40 $240,905
Deborah Fowler SR VP, STUDENT SUCCESS 40 $216,579

https://nonprofitlight.com/ut/salt-lake-...university

These salaries are nothing in compared to what I see at my large state university supported campus, trust me, the chancellor where I work full time, is making over 1 million USD, plus free room and board at a home that is worth about 2 million. Not to mention our vice chancellor is making almost 800K a year. This is at a non profit state supported university that has far less students than WGU. So actually based on the number of students, the administrators where I work are overpaid, compared to the WGU ones. Plus they raise tuition every year as the state continues letting them raise tuition, which currently is about 15,000 Usd per year for in state students, which does not include room and board.

Anyways you are forgetting attrition in you calculations. The attrition rate at WGU is very high, I have colleagues who are there full time. The number of students is based on how many who have enrolled and that number changes every month as they are intaking students each month. I was told that in the College of Business in the last year alone, they lost over 1500 students, while in the Healthcare College almost 900, and in the IT College almost 800, so while they have many students they are losing them as well.

You also forget that not everyone is taking a year to complete a degree at WGU, so your calculations of how much they bring in is not correct. Some can do the entire degree in 1 term, so the money is not always guaranteed as it is at a regular university where students cannot accelerate or complete their degrees in one term. And this is why the competency model is not wanted at traditional universities (the lack of guaranteed finances) and why some universities that had competency based flex programs have did away with them, like Hodges, because they can be somewhat costly to the university, despite serving the best interest of students.

WGU is also one of the more generous employers in higher education, they always gave bonuses to program mentors, course instructors, and even covid bonuses last year. They have also added paid parental leave etc...While people are upset and thinking this is greedy WGU, think again because this has happened at many universities across the board, the problem is that WGU went for helping students first by over hiring in those  2 colleges and not keeping them running lean as the Teachers College and the It College is ran. And I will continue to stress they could have simply kept everyone and raised tuition quite high to do this, but they have not.

[ss20ts]

Ok let's say magically all 135,000 students are only at WGU for 1 term (even though that's rare we'll use that). Losing 3200 students is a drop in the bucket when you have 135,000 students. That's less than 2.4%. There are also new students every month. Stunts like yesterday don't provide great PR and the online colleges are already responding with a LOT of social media ads about transferring. Wonder why that started this morning? Hmmmm....

135,000 x $3475 (which is the lowest tuition and not what tuition is for most degrees) = $469,125,000. That's almost half a BILLION dollars!

Yeah they're so generous that they just laid off 160 staff and hired a new CFO who started 10 days ago. Coincidence? Doubtful.

[sacredrain]

Ok let's say magically all 135,000 students are only at WGU for 1 term (even though that's rare we'll use that). Losing 3200 students is a drop in the bucket when you have 135,000 students. That's less than 2.4%. There are also new students every month. Stunts like yesterday don't provide great PR and the online colleges are already responding with a LOT of social media ads about transferring. Wonder why that started this morning? Hmmmm....

135,000 x $3475 (which is the lowest tuition and not what tuition is for most degrees) = $469,125,000. That's almost half a BILLION dollars!

Yeah they're so generous that they just laid off 160 staff and hired a new CFO who started 10 days ago. Coincidence? Doubtful.

You and I can agree to disagree, as I said I seriously doubt there are 135,000 students at WGU at the moment. As for the pr thing, its not their fault that people took to the internet to say they had been laid off, we live in the social media era, this type of thing will happen. You also cant help it that universities are sensing blood and after students. There is only a limited pool of students and too many universities and colleges in America, so competition is fierce. If you are a private university without state funds you will have to go after every student you can, as you are competing against tax payer funded universities. 

Layoffs do happen, where I work full time they are talking about layoffs and freezing positions, despite our online programs having record growth and our on campus programs as well, plus we have had our second year of tuition increases, yet the university's finance department is all about shoring up finances and make us even more financially solvent. Basically these universities know they can keep people working even harder for less money and that is the name of the game now: get as many students as you can, fill up classes with students, etc and not hire any additional staff.

Not only that not all students are paying the full rate, some are part time as well so without knowing who is part time, who is paying what your calculations are far off. Plus without knowing what their expenses are, it is hard to see how much they are actually bringing in or have left over. I know some full time faculty there were making 80K plus a year with benefits, plus some program mentors were at 55k to 65K per year with benefits. Not only that they have campuses in a few states and staff there as well, so without knowing how much they brought in and how much they have in expenses, its hard to determine what their financial picture is like. I am not defending them, just pointing out to everyone how this works and why this probably happened. But people will think what they want to think and believe what they want. In all honesty I have seen places lay off more people in higher ed and K to 12 ed than WGU, the fact it is only 160 people is a blessing compared to a school district that is discussing laying off 400 in the upcoming school year.

[ss20ts]

Ok let's say magically all 135,000 students are only at WGU for 1 term (even though that's rare we'll use that). Losing 3200 students is a drop in the bucket when you have 135,000 students. That's less than 2.4%. There are also new students every month. Stunts like yesterday don't provide great PR and the online colleges are already responding with a LOT of social media ads about transferring. Wonder why that started this morning? Hmmmm....

135,000 x $3475 (which is the lowest tuition and not what tuition is for most degrees) = $469,125,000. That's almost half a BILLION dollars!

Yeah they're so generous that they just laid off 160 staff and hired a new CFO who started 10 days ago. Coincidence? Doubtful.

You and I can agree to disagree, as I said I seriously doubt there are 135,000 students at WGU at the moment. As for the pr thing, its not their fault that people took to the internet to say they had been laid off, we live in the social media era, this type of thing will happen. You also cant help it that universities are sensing blood and after students. There is only a limited pool of students and too many universities and colleges in America, so competition is fierce. If you are a private university without state funds you will have to go after every student you can, as you are competing against tax payer funded universities. 


Not only that not all students are paying the full rate, some are part time as well so without knowing who is part time, who is paying what your calculations are far off. Plus without knowing what their expenses are, it is hard to see how much they are actually bringing in or have left over. I know some full time faculty there were making 80K plus a year with benefits, plus some program mentors were at 55k to 65K per year with benefits. Not only that they have campuses in a few states and staff there as well, so without knowing how much they brought in and how much they have in expenses, its hard to determine what their financial picture is like. I am not defending them, just pointing out to everyone how this works and why this probably happened. But people will think what they want to think and believe what they want. In all honesty I have seen places lay off more people in higher ed and K to 12 ed than WGU, the fact it is only 160 people is a blessing compared to a school district that is discussing laying off 400 in the upcoming school year.

The 135,000 students enrolled came directly from WGU yesterday. 

The PR problem is that WGU waited hours before notifying students and staff. Students emails to their mentors were returned which caused a huge problem. The emails should never had been returned. They should have been forwarded to a supervisor. Students called Student Services who had no idea what was going on. They weren't told until the end of the day that the layoffs took place. Students still do not have new mentors. New students started today and there's tons of posts of students saying they can't access anything because they no longer have a mentor. That is not a great way to start off your term.

You don't sound like you know much about how tuition operates at WGU. Tuition is a flat fee for 6 months. There is not such thing as part time tuition. Everyone pays the fee based on their degree program. Each degree program has a tuition fee that's billed every 6 months.

[sacredrain]

Ok let's say magically all 135,000 students are only at WGU for 1 term (even though that's rare we'll use that). Losing 3200 students is a drop in the bucket when you have 135,000 students. That's less than 2.4%. There are also new students every month. Stunts like yesterday don't provide great PR and the online colleges are already responding with a LOT of social media ads about transferring. Wonder why that started this morning? Hmmmm....

135,000 x $3475 (which is the lowest tuition and not what tuition is for most degrees) = $469,125,000. That's almost half a BILLION dollars!

Yeah they're so generous that they just laid off 160 staff and hired a new CFO who started 10 days ago. Coincidence? Doubtful.

You and I can agree to disagree, as I said I seriously doubt there are 135,000 students at WGU at the moment. As for the pr thing, its not their fault that people took to the internet to say they had been laid off, we live in the social media era, this type of thing will happen. You also cant help it that universities are sensing blood and after students. There is only a limited pool of students and too many universities and colleges in America, so competition is fierce. If you are a private university without state funds you will have to go after every student you can, as you are competing against tax payer funded universities. 


Not only that not all students are paying the full rate, some are part time as well so without knowing who is part time, who is paying what your calculations are far off. Plus without knowing what their expenses are, it is hard to see how much they are actually bringing in or have left over. I know some full time faculty there were making 80K plus a year with benefits, plus some program mentors were at 55k to 65K per year with benefits. Not only that they have campuses in a few states and staff there as well, so without knowing how much they brought in and how much they have in expenses, its hard to determine what their financial picture is like. I am not defending them, just pointing out to everyone how this works and why this probably happened. But people will think what they want to think and believe what they want. In all honesty I have seen places lay off more people in higher ed and K to 12 ed than WGU, the fact it is only 160 people is a blessing compared to a school district that is discussing laying off 400 in the upcoming school year.

The 135,000 students enrolled came directly from WGU yesterday. 

The PR problem is that WGU waited hours before notifying students and staff. Students emails to their mentors were returned which caused a huge problem. The emails should never had been returned. They should have been forwarded to a supervisor. Students called Student Services who had no idea what was going on. They weren't told until the end of the day that the layoffs took place. Students still do not have new mentors. New students started today and there's tons of posts of students saying they can't access anything because they no longer have a mentor. That is not a great way to start off your term.

You don't sound like you know much about how tuition operates at WGU. Tuition is a flat fee for 6 months. There is not such thing as part time tuition. Everyone pays the fee based on their degree program. Each degree program has a tuition fee that's billed every 6 months.

There is part time tuition if you are self pay you can get part time tuition and if you are at the end of your term you can get part time tuition if you do not have 12 cus to register for. Military va students can either sign up for the military full time of 18 cus or can sign up for military part time 12 cus. 12 cus is the full time for most non military students. Financial aid students cannot get part time  status because of the financial aid funds, unless at the end of their term. If a student meets any of the criteria stated, they can ask their mentor or call WGU's financial service to get the part time status, it does not occur automatically.

And here is the info from their handbook:
https://cm.wgu.edu/t5/WGU-Student-Policy-Handbook/Tuition-Information-for-Part-Time-Enrollment/ta-p/107
Part-Time Enrollment
As stated in the article Full-Time Enrollment Status, all students are expected to be enrolled full-time for each term, while enrolled at WGU. Full-time for an undergraduate student is 12 competency units (CUs). Full-time for a graduate student is eight (8) CUs.

Students who are unable to enroll full-time due to not having enough CUs in a term may enroll part-time. There are three exceptions to full-time enrollment where a student should be considered part-time.
Students in their last term prior to graduating without enough CUs remaining to be considered full-time.*
Students in the term prior to the demonstration teaching period without enough CUs enrolled in their term to be considered full-time.*
Students in the undergraduate portion of a nursing bridge program who do not have enough CUs remaining to obtain the BSN degree at full-time status.*
Students unable to enroll in full-time CUs for their term and who are approved for part-time status may have their tuition prorated based on CUs attempted for the term. Adding any additional CUs to the term after the part-time status has been processed will result in increased tuition.

Once a student’s term is updated to reflect the part-time status, tuition is prorated and posted to the student’s account. Students who are eligible for financial aid will be reviewed after tuition is prorated. Once reviewed, financial aid will post to the student's account. For undergraduate students who are eligible to receive a federal aid Pell Grant; the Pell Grant is revised based on the number of CUs remaining.

If students are enrolled in less than half-time CUs (less than six CUs as an undergraduate or less than four CUs as a graduate), students are not eligible to receive any direct federal loans.

*Note: Prorated (part-time) students will have their tuition adjusted by the number of competency units attempted within a term, not by time attended within a term. Only tuition will be prorated. All fees are still charged at the full amount for the entire term, regardless of full-time or part-time status in a term.

As I stated I work for WGU as a contract evaluator and contract part time faculty member (new positions they created about a year ago) and I have many colleagues there as well (some as PM's, a few as CI's, and some as enrollment counselors). So I know how the university works, please do not assume I do not.  If anyone does not know how WGU works, it is you apparently. 

As for what happened yesterday, HR and managers had to phone up staff who were being laid off throughout the day, plus load balancing takes a while if a mentor had say 100 plus students those students have to be divided up among existing mentors. I agree it is bad for the students, but management is supposed to go in and confirm degree plans etc.. as for accessing things, the university had a systemwide outage for degree plans, as myself and others could not access plans as they were updating. There was what is called a "red post" on the student login screen to courses most of the day yesterday and part of today.

[ss20ts]

Ok let's say magically all 135,000 students are only at WGU for 1 term (even though that's rare we'll use that). Losing 3200 students is a drop in the bucket when you have 135,000 students. That's less than 2.4%. There are also new students every month. Stunts like yesterday don't provide great PR and the online colleges are already responding with a LOT of social media ads about transferring. Wonder why that started this morning? Hmmmm....

135,000 x $3475 (which is the lowest tuition and not what tuition is for most degrees) = $469,125,000. That's almost half a BILLION dollars!

Yeah they're so generous that they just laid off 160 staff and hired a new CFO who started 10 days ago. Coincidence? Doubtful.

You and I can agree to disagree, as I said I seriously doubt there are 135,000 students at WGU at the moment. As for the pr thing, its not their fault that people took to the internet to say they had been laid off, we live in the social media era, this type of thing will happen. You also cant help it that universities are sensing blood and after students. There is only a limited pool of students and too many universities and colleges in America, so competition is fierce. If you are a private university without state funds you will have to go after every student you can, as you are competing against tax payer funded universities. 


Not only that not all students are paying the full rate, some are part time as well so without knowing who is part time, who is paying what your calculations are far off. Plus without knowing what their expenses are, it is hard to see how much they are actually bringing in or have left over. I know some full time faculty there were making 80K plus a year with benefits, plus some program mentors were at 55k to 65K per year with benefits. Not only that they have campuses in a few states and staff there as well, so without knowing how much they brought in and how much they have in expenses, its hard to determine what their financial picture is like. I am not defending them, just pointing out to everyone how this works and why this probably happened. But people will think what they want to think and believe what they want. In all honesty I have seen places lay off more people in higher ed and K to 12 ed than WGU, the fact it is only 160 people is a blessing compared to a school district that is discussing laying off 400 in the upcoming school year.

The 135,000 students enrolled came directly from WGU yesterday. 

The PR problem is that WGU waited hours before notifying students and staff. Students emails to their mentors were returned which caused a huge problem. The emails should never had been returned. They should have been forwarded to a supervisor. Students called Student Services who had no idea what was going on. They weren't told until the end of the day that the layoffs took place. Students still do not have new mentors. New students started today and there's tons of posts of students saying they can't access anything because they no longer have a mentor. That is not a great way to start off your term.

You don't sound like you know much about how tuition operates at WGU. Tuition is a flat fee for 6 months. There is not such thing as part time tuition. Everyone pays the fee based on their degree program. Each degree program has a tuition fee that's billed every 6 months.

There is part time tuition if you are self pay you can get part time tuition and if you are at the end of your term you can get part time tuition if you do not have 12 cus to register for. Military va students can either sign up for the military full time of 18 cus or can sign up for military part time 12 cus. 12 cus is the full time for most non military students. Financial aid students cannot get part time  status because of the financial aid funds. If a student meets any of the criteria stated, they can ask their mentor or call WGU's financial service to get the part time status, it does not occur automatically.

And here is the info from their handbook:
https://cm.wgu.edu/t5/WGU-Student-Policy...t/ta-p/107
Part-Time Enrollment
As stated in the article Full-Time Enrollment Status, all students are expected to be enrolled full-time for each term, while enrolled at WGU. Full-time for an undergraduate student is 12 competency units (CUs). Full-time for a graduate student is eight (8) CUs.



Students who are unable to enroll full-time due to not having enough CUs in a term may enroll part-time. There are three exceptions to full-time enrollment where a student should be considered part-time.

Students in their last term prior to graduating without enough CUs remaining to be considered full-time.*
Students in the term prior to the demonstration teaching period without enough CUs enrolled in their term to be considered full-time.*
Students in the undergraduate portion of a nursing bridge program who do not have enough CUs remaining to obtain the BSN degree at full-time status.*
Students unable to enroll in full-time CUs for their term and who are approved for part-time status may have their tuition prorated based on CUs attempted for the term. Adding any additional CUs to the term after the part-time status has been processed will result in increased tuition.



Once a student’s term is updated to reflect the part-time status, tuition is prorated and posted to the student’s account. Students who are eligible for financial aid will be reviewed after tuition is prorated. Once reviewed, financial aid will post to the student's account. For undergraduate students who are eligible to receive a federal aid Pell Grant; the Pell Grant is revised based on the number of CUs remaining.



If students are enrolled in less than half-time CUs (less than six CUs as an undergraduate or less than four CUs as a graduate), students are not eligible to receive any direct federal loans.



*Note: Prorated (part-time) students will have their tuition adjusted by the number of competency units attempted within a term, not by time attended within a term. Only tuition will be prorated. All fees are still charged at the full amount for the entire term, regardless of full-time or part-time status in a term.



As I stated I work for WGU as a contract evaluator and contract part time faculty member (new positions they created about a year ago) and I have many colleagues there as well (some as PM's, a few as CI's, and some as enrollment counselors). So I know how the university works, please do not assume I do not. As for what happened yesterday, HR and managers had to phone up staff who were being laid off throughout the day, plus load balancing takes a while if a mentor had say 100 plus students those students have to be divided up among existing mentors. I agree it is bad for the students, but management is supposed to go in and confirm degree plans etc.. as for accessing things, the university had a systemwide outage for degree plans, as myself and others could not access plans as they were updating. There was what is called a "red post" on the student login screen to courses most of the day yesterday and part of today.

You work there yet don't know how many students are enrolled? The meeting to lay them off took place at 10 am. There were 2 mandatory meetings at 10am. One told them they were gone and the other told the mentors who were staying that they still had a job. Then there was the 3pm meeting notifying Student Services what happened. It's clear that you don't seem to have an issue what how this was handled and that's probably because the school gives you a paycheck. You're not looking at this from a student's standpoint at all. 

When you layoff 160 people you need to have a plan BEFORE you lay them off! WGU decides 3 days ago to lay these people off. They CLEARLY did not have a plan. There was no announcement made to students who suddenly could not contact their mentors nor was there one made to Student Services so that they could help reassure students that there was a plan in place. Students still don't have a mentor and can't access classes. That's not a plan. That's a disaster. Mind you these students are PAYING for this service!

[sacredrain]

[quote pid='340555' dateline='1625175015']

You work there yet don't know how many students are enrolled? The meeting to lay them off took place at 10 am. There were 2 mandatory meetings at 10am. One told them they were gone and the other told the mentors who were staying that they still had a job. Then there was the 3pm meeting notifying Student Services what happened. It's clear that you don't seem to have an issue what how this was handled and that's probably because the school gives you a paycheck. You're not looking at this from a student's standpoint at all. 

When you layoff 160 people you need to have a plan BEFORE you lay them off! WGU decides 3 days ago to lay these people off. They CLEARLY did not have a plan. There was no announcement made to students who suddenly could not contact their mentors nor was there one made to Student Services so that they could help reassure students that there was a plan in place. Students still don't have a mentor and can't access classes. That's not a plan. That's a disaster. Mind you these students are PAYING for this service!
[/quote]

I am saying that basically the enrollment numbers are "rolling." It could include the number they expect to enroll for this month, but there is no real way of knowing because of the rolling nature of WGU. It changes every month. 

So saying you have 135,000 students could mean students who are in the middle of terms, students who have graduated that month, and students who have committed to the upcoming term, and new students who have completed the enrollment process. This is why I am saying they may not have the 135,000 strong number, due to how they count students. Most universities only count students who are actually there and have enrolled say 10 days after a term starts.

So say someone doesnt complete orientation within 5 days they are dropped and it does happen, but they count in the numbers because they went through the enrollment process but they will not count for the August numbers as they are gone, so its hard to say there is no hard set enrollment figure and it changes as I mentioned.

As for the layoffs, the meetings were not college wide, they were team wide. Teams vary from college to college, plus HR had to contact each person who was laid off and then the managers had to as well. As for layoffs these happen all the time so not sure why anyone is surprised. As I stated in a previous post, I used to work at Kaplan University (now Purdue University Global), they laid off 1000 of us 2 weeks before Christmas in 2012, students were also left in a lurch as some faculty who were at the end of courses were dismissed and students went a few days without a university instructor until they had figured out who remained and who stayed and reassigned the students. Keep in mind that Kaplan had 4 terms that started a month back then (one each week) so students who were due to start the next week had no one to talk to either.  It sucks I agree, but it happens. I am not saying its right, I am saying it does happen.

As from a student standpoint, once again do not make baseless claims you do not know me so you do not know how I feel about it at all, nor do you know my experiences as a student. I know how the students feel because my course load just went from 200 students in the course I teach at WGU, to almost 400 due to some of the layoffs. Plus I have been an online student as well as a traditional one. I know how it is to be a student on a campus and you have to wait an entire year to graduate, because you are waiting for a course you need, that you cannot transfer in and only one professor teaches it and that professor will not let you do independent study. I also know how it is to have faculty on your disstertation committee come and go rapidly because they are part time and contractors so this sets you back, as well as having academic counselors who are here today and gone tomorrow. Lastly if I did not care about students I would not be doing all I can to help out at University of the People, where lets face it, the honorarium is not enough to get a Starbucks when you divide it up by how many students I have. So do not insult me by saying I am only doing what I do for the paycheck, get your facts straight first.

[ashkir]

The Teachers College layoffs make sense. Didn't they close down their California programs and several other states?

[ss20ts]

The Teachers College layoffs make sense. Didn't they close down their California programs and several other states?

The Teacher College didn't have layoffs. Only Business and Healthcare had layoffs which is odd. Business is their largest division.

---

So saying you have 135,000 students could mean students who are in the middle of terms, students who have graduated that month, and students who have committed to the upcoming term, and new students who have completed the enrollment process. This is why I am saying they may not have the 135,000 strong number, due to how they count students. Most universities only count students who are actually there and have enrolled say 10 days after a term starts.

I didn't pull the number out of the thin air. WGU used 135,000 in their email last night. You work there so why don't you ask them how they calculate the number of students enrolled? You have a mile long list of excuses. Stop it. This was handled poorly.