Stephen G. Krueger

Happy birthday to the panel that UNC SILS still has not paid us for

Updates:

As of June 16, 2025, panelists have still not been paid. SILS staff have misgendered some of the panelists in email communications. They have completely stopped responding to our emails asking for updates on the payment process.

As of April 18, 2025, some but not all panelists have been paid. The SILS dean had a staff member paste his lengthy response below into an email to the panelists and has never communicated with any of us directly (unless one counts the public comments below).

Just over a year ago, the editors and several chapter authors from Trans and Gender Diverse Voices in Libraries did a panel for the School of Information and Library Science at the University of North Carolina. It was really enjoyable; the virtual event was open to anyone but geared towards library students. Unfortunately, I can now say with complete certainty that I do not plan to ever work with or support UNC SILS again, either as a library professional or as an alumn.

This was supposed to be a compensated panel (paperwork and all done beforehand). Due to some sort of failure on the part of the student organizations that had promised to provide the funding, we were not paid before the spring 2024 semester ended. Since August 2024, we have been trying to get the school administration to fulfill the agreement broken by their student groups. As of today, this has not happened; all the panelists have been asked multiple times to supply the same information (which they seem to keep losing) and we have been told over and over that payment will be on the way eventually. It has now been over a year since the panel.

There doesn’t seem to be anything we can do about this; the SILS dean and associate dean did not reply when I emailed them in a last-ditch attempt to find someone high up enough to make the promised payment happen. It is possible that payment is actually in process this time (I’ll believe it when I see it, as none of the promises to remedy the situation over the past year have gone anywhere). It is absolutely wild to me that UNC SILS hired a panel of trans and gender diverse people to speak to students about our experiences of marginalization in the profession, then failed to pay us. When it was brought to their attention, they then failed to immediately fix the situation and sincerely apologize. (Well, there may be a half-hearted apology buried somewhere in the months of emails, but it carries no weight until we receive the payment due to us. The tone of communications is now one of annoyance that we have the gall to email every month or so asking where our money is–if we get a reply at all.)

As an alumn, I certainly won’t be supporting the program or encouraging others to do so. As a trans librarian, I want to spread the word to others to be very cautious about working with UNC SILS. This has all been enormously frustrating and disappointing; the panel itself was wonderful, and I’m frankly furious that the school’s failure to meet its agreements has soured the whole experience.

I have no social media, but others are welcome and encouraged to share this. If nothing else, I don’t want others to be taken advantage of by this institution as we were.

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Stephen Krueger

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7 responses to “Happy birthday to the panel that UNC SILS still has not paid us for”

  1. jeffreybardzell Avatar
    jeffreybardzell

    Stephen,

    I am the dean of SILS. First of all, I am sorry that this issue is ongoing.

    I want to share with your readers what is making this difficult—because I can assure you it is not at all the case that SILS doesn’t care, is incompetent, is lazy, or anything like that.

    To begin with, those who offered to compensate you were members of a university-sponsored student group. They happened also to be SILS students, but it was not as SILS students that they offered panelists compensation. This matters, because their funds were not SILS funds but rather university funds. SILS never was a part of this agreement, and as dean I was never asked to, nor did I ever authorize, these payments to the panelists. So while your ire is trained on SILS, it was the university student group that actually created this situation, and it was the university student group that failed to pay the panelists, not SILS.

    As I understand it, the students who offered the compensation graduated and simply didn’t do the work to get the panelists paid. Worse, the funds that they had indeed (as you note) arranged in advance to use for the compensation expired on June 30, 2024, and reverted back to the university—months before I heard of any of this.

    I first heard of this mess in the fall. And though SILS did not invite the panelists, and SILS did not authorize any funds to be used, I nonetheless directed my staff to honor the students’ commitment anyway and pay out of SILS’ own accounts to make this right.

    And at that point, labyrinthine university accounting policies about vendors and bidding, NC state laws, and federal laws (because some of the intended payees were international) basically made it impossible for us to send out checks. Our accounting system does not work well when things aren’t done right in the first place and have to be fixed after the fact. As a result, we have had to consult with university central accounting and do all sorts of behind-the-scenes work to find a hack that would get panelists paid. That approach is finally working for the domestic panelists, but for the international ones, there are additional hurdles that we are still navigating.

    I agree that this is taking unacceptably long. Quite honestly, I also feel, as you probably do, that panelists really shouldn’t need to know whether the university vs. the school promised this money—the panelists quite simply should be paid. The system to which we are subjected to is not so straightforward.

    But forgive me if I feel frustrated that it was not SILS that made the commitment to panelists, nor was it SILS that created this situation, and further it is SILS that is trying to make good on it, and yet SILS is being portrayed in a negative light on social media. The whole situation has frustrated staff and faculty who have worked in good faith to fix a mistake not of their own making; and as they see this spreading on social media, it is additionally demoralizing them. That’s a situation that is hard for me to accept.

    I hope you and your readers will consider this additional context while you wait for us to make this right. I wish you didn’t have to wait; truly, I do.

    Again, I really am sorry that this has happened!

    Jeffrey Bardzell
    Dean, School of Information and Library Science
    University of North Carolina—Chapel Hill

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    1. sgkrueger Avatar
      sgkrueger

      Hi Jeffrey,
      Thank you for the explanation. Would you please email all the panelists with this same information, since none of it has been shared with us before? I did email you privately several months ago asking for your help resolving this but received no reply. I’m really hoping we can be paid soon for our work.
      -Stephen

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    2. Keahi Avatar
      Keahi

      Jeffrey,

      To me, there are two issues here, one of which is that we haven’t been paid for our panel in over a year, and the other is the communication from SILS about this issue.

      Stephen first contacted SILS in late August or early September and it took some effort to get a response. Then, on September 26th, we were told there would be an update soon. Stephen asked for an update on October 23rd. There was no response. Then, I asked for an update on November 11th. We finally got a response that acknowledged the delay was unacceptable (I believe the first time this sentiment was communicated) and were told they’d reach out when there was an update. It wasn’t until December 3rd that any of the cause for delay was communicated, and that email seems to contradict some of the messaging here. We were told that the students were not at fault and they did submit our paperwork for reimbursement, it just wasn’t processed before the end of the fiscal year. We were told this issue would be avoided in the future by having student organizations involve a member of the finance team whenever there were payments for speakers involved. I honestly don’t appreciate the implication in your response that the students are to blame. If they did not follow proper protocols for ensuring honoraria are paid out before the end of the fiscal year, that seems to be a student organization training and/or oversight issue, as was pointed out in the December 3rd email.

      The December 3rd email also made it sound like our payments were imminent. By February 25th, none of us had been paid so Stephen reached out again. We were told the issue would be escalated to “critical status” and we’d be paid shortly. One of our panelists followed up a month later and there was no response. A couple days ago, Stephen followed up again and we were just told there were delays and to email the finance contact for any individual updates. Since this is the third time we’ve been told to expect a payment soon, we are understandably skeptical.

      If Stephen had not talked about this publicly, I’m not sure how long we’d have had to go on not being paid in order for you to realize this was not being resolved quickly and “go into crisis communications mode.” By the time Stephen heard back from anyone in SILS, it had already been 6 months since the panel took place. A simple email from you explaining what was happening and apologizing for the delay would have gone a long way at that point. I’m sure we all would have appreciated an explanation of what the delay was about earlier on, as well as communication from SILS that did not require at least two of us to reach out before getting a reply. I’ve checked the emails over and over again, and I believe your first comment contains the only apologies we’ve ever received. And, while I acknowledge it may be demoralizing for your staff to see us publicly discuss our frustration about not being paid for over a year for our work, I hope you understand that it is much more frustrating on our end.

      Mahalo nui,

      Keahi

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      1. Keahi Avatar
        Keahi

        Re: blaming SILS students.

        Actually, I don’t feel I said enough about this. This is what we were told in our December 3rd email: ” […] Our SILS student organization, ILSSA, had been approved for funding, but the payment process is through the UNC student controller, not the SILS students. Unfortunately, the paperwork SILS students submitted for your payment was not processed before the end of the fiscal year, and the funds expired. Without your September email, we wouldn’t have known, so thank you for sharing that your payments had not been received.

        While SILS students were not at fault, we’re taking steps to make sure that the process is smoother in the future when SILS student organization events require payments. One step is to have student organizations coordinate with a member of the SILS finance team. […]”

        It doesn’t sound like the students did anything wrong (they got the request for honoraria approved. They submitted the paperwork before the end of the fiscal year. They graduated in May 2024 and would/should not have been responsible for tracking the status of our payments after they graduated). And, even if they had done anything wrong, I would like to restate that that would be an oversight or training issue and not the actual fault of the students.

        -Keahi

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    3. steven v Avatar
      steven v

      Jeff, just noticing that you make $329k+/year as the Dean of this school.

      Since you could clearly afford to, perhaps you could just compensate these folks yourself instead of writing all of this?

      Thanks in advance for doing something incredibly simple and practical instead of placing the blame on students who have nowhere near the access to resources you do.

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  2. jeffreybardzell Avatar
    jeffreybardzell

    Great suggestion to email this out to the panelists; I will do so. I did respond to you–indirectly, through my staff. Some of that happened during times when I over-optimistically believed that this was the sort of thing that we could just fix, and so I didn’t go into crisis communications mode. Regardless, this is a monkey I want off my back as well–you’d be dismayed how much SILS has spent trying to fix this, funds that I would much rather spend on panelists and other experts to enrich our courses.

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    1. AC Avatar
      AC

      I’m a trans librarian who attended the panel, and I think it will have been worth every little bit. It was a great panel; what they did as trans and gender expansive librarians showing up for students and early-career folks was something that trans and queer students need and rarely find while in school, and was thus invaluable. It sounds like the public conversation about this is hitting you a little hard; I can sympathize with the fact that the logistics for making the payment happen are now extremely complicated (they would be at my university too), and you are doing your best to make things right. But respectfully, this communication reads a great deal like a demand that the panelists display more gratitude for the *efforts* being made before the actual payment happens. It sounds like these panelists didn’t particularly get context about the delay until here and now, despite repeated attempts to communicate politely and patiently without going public, and after having provided personal information for payment multiple times. Communication about the delay probably would have gone a long way, as would better school oversight of the process by which student groups contract with external speakers. I respect that you’re in a difficult position to retrieve the proper funding now, but the clear and present reality is that these trans and gender diverse professionals still have not been paid for their work after a year. It appears to me that you do more harm to SILS’s reputation by reacting in this way publicly than by simply apologizing, managing the workflows necessary for fund disbursement until they are successfully completed, and communicating transparently and privately to the panelists about why the delay has happened and what to expect next.

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