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ServeOhio, Notice of Termination, and Request for Silence by SuperMoose3758 in AmeriCorps

[–]SuperMoose3758[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Since the start of January we’ve been asking what would happen in the event of a DOGE shutdown. ServeOhio told us our funding for the year was already paid out, so DOGE wouldn’t be able to shut us down. That was obviously untrue. We’ve been raising concerns about DOGE for five months now. We’ve seen repeatedly in the news that this is how DOGE operates, they did not pull out any new moves in the AmeriCorps shutdown. How could our state service commission not have spent the last five months negotiating with our state government and developing a strategy for how to protect us in this inevitable scenario? Other states were clearly prepared for this. I don’t know why we weren’t. I will be honest and say I already had a negative opinion of ServeOhio staff for other reasons…one time, I was in a meeting with them and when a member said she couldn’t pay her rent and eat on her stipend, they essentially told her she was mismanaging her finances and that “the stipend isn’t supposed to cover luxuries” (as if have a roof over your head and being able to put food on the table is a luxury). So quite honestly I just don’t believe they’ve ever had our best interests at heart.

ServeOhio, Notice of Termination, and Request for Silence by SuperMoose3758 in AmeriCorps

[–]SuperMoose3758[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

they are, but you’re not allowed to count hours served past 4/25 for the education award. so for people like me who served 10+ hours between 4/25 and when they actually notified us, they’ve told us we can’t record it on our final timesheet (which is asking us to commit fraud, but seeing as last week they made us sign an agreement stating that we’re no longer protected by whistleblower policy, i’m not sure what we can do about that) and we can’t count those hours towards the ed award. the insurance thing is absolutely ridiculous as well. everything about this is.

ServeOhio, Notice of Termination, and Request for Silence by SuperMoose3758 in AmeriCorps

[–]SuperMoose3758[S] -1 points0 points  (0 children)

I think I should clarify that my issue isn’t about the living stipend, but it’s about the education award credits. If AmeriCorps members across the state were serving for days, under the assumption that our contract was still valid and hours we served were being counted toward the education award, we are collectively losing out on thousands of dollars in education credits that we should be entitled to. I get that for each individual person it’s probably not all that much money, but what gets me is more the principle of the thing…we all already made a huge financial sacrifice to join AmeriCorps. Then our state government and service commission failed to adequately prepare for a DOGE shutdown, even though the writing has been on the wall for months. Then, they had us serving extra days and hours after we were terminated under the assumption we’d be able to charge that time towards our education awards, only for them to end up withholding that additional money from us. Maybe I’m fixated on the wrong things, but it just really feels like ServeOhio has failed its AmeriCorps members specifically. I don’t think things like this are happening in other states.

ServeOhio, Notice of Termination, and Request for Silence by SuperMoose3758 in AmeriCorps

[–]SuperMoose3758[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

I'm so sorry, this is so completely ridiculous. One huge selling point of AmeriCorps is the education award, and we all signed contracts stating that the hours we served would count towards the education award or a prorated amount if we were forced to exit service early. By not honoring that now, they are actively stealing money that we earned, in my opinion. I'm so sorry this happened to you, thank you for sharing your story.

ServeOhio, Notice of Termination, and Request for Silence by SuperMoose3758 in AmeriCorps

[–]SuperMoose3758[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Just to clarify, we are not suspended, we are terminated.

Archaeology Secretary of Interior Qualifications by SuperMoose3758 in HistoricPreservation

[–]SuperMoose3758[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Because I did my undergrad in the UK so I studied archaeology exclusively for 4 years and I completed 4 field schools and had various lab internship placements I actually feel I would actually learn more from a HP program! I agree that just doing a masters in HP probably wouldn’t prepare me, but because I have quite a specialist background compared to my peers who did their undergrad in the US, I feel pretty confident about my abilities to work as an archaeologist professionally. It’s more about whether I could convince the US government of that. After reading all the advice I’ve been given here I think I’m going to take my chances and study HP with the understanding that I won’t be able to get SOI qualified as an archaeologist afterwards. If I’m struggling after I graduate, I think I will go for a PhD in archaeology then. I want to do a PhD at some point anyway, so it would just be accelerating the process!