WITS help desk substantially reduces student staff for spring semester

The WITS help desk on Jan. 23, 2026. Photo by Mac Childers.

Ahead of the spring semester, the Willamette Integrated Technology Services (WITS) help desk let go of more than half its student workers and cut student hours, leaving some former employees confused.

At the end of last semester, the WITS help desk leadership, which provides on-call tech help to the campus community, informed its student workers that their hours would be reduced to 20 hours per week, divided among all student employees. 

Student workers were then told that only one and a half student workers out of the five who were active would be retained for regular work with the help desk instead.

Jeremy Lovato, the chief information officer for WITS, said the purpose behind this change was to streamline the process of resolving service requests or tickets.

“The goal for any IT organization is to have a first point of contact resolution, and that requires your help desk team to deal with highly complex requests and have access to some of our systems that are secure and have access to personal information,” Lovato said.

Lovato added that, since they’re trying not to escalate so many tickets up the chain of command, they needed to have more professionally skilled help desk staff.

This includes being able to have one student developing deeper relationships with staff, faculty and clients, along with being able to provide the more complex training required to make the help desk more efficient, he said.

When asked when the decision to phase out most student help desk workers was made, Lovato said the changes were planned to “go live this calendar year,” and the decision had been made over the course of the fall semester.

In a later statement to The Collegian, he spoke further about the intentionality behind the change. “This transition was intentionally planned within WITS as part of aligning staffing with higher expectations for IT service delivery and security, and it was timed at the end of a semester, which is when student employment is typically reassessed,” Lovato said. 

Lovato also spoke to the potential for students to be reassigned throughout other IT areas at the university, such as application development and the web development team. When asked to clarify if the students who were working at the help desk had been redistributed to other areas of IT, Lovato restated the staff had been “reduced to one.”

Former student workers react

Maya Colclazier (’26) and River Hosten (’26) are two such students who were let go from the help desk.

Colclazier was an employee at the help desk since August 2022 and was promoted to help desk lead in June before being laid off in December. She felt there was a lack of communication throughout the process. “I think in the time I was working there, it had been kind of all over the place, and then restructuring started when Mr. Lovato came on,” she said.

Colclazier witnessed the budget and available work hours, especially for the help desk, get reduced consistently. 

“It wasn’t a shock that something like that would happen eventually,” she said. “We just didn’t know when and to what extent it would be.”

In line with Lovato’s responses, Colclazier highlighted the importance of consistent service as one of the reasons given for the restructuring, while also discussing concerns with the communication around the situation. 

Hosten was a newer hire to the help desk, having been brought on this past July. He noted his surprise at being hired so close to his graduation, and spoke about a seeming lack of effort being put into his training and how he was “mostly trained in things [he] asked to learn about.”

Both Hosten and Colclazier spoke about their concerns with the manner of communication used. 

“The way that they explained it at the time was very confusing because I think they were trying to make it seem not as bad as it was,” Hosten said. "They originally told us they’d have 20 hours available for student workers a week, but 20 hours split between five student workers is not sustainable to have a living.”

Lovato, in a statement responding to concerns brought up by the former student workers, acknowledged the concern students had about the transition.

“Anytime roles change, especially in a student employment context, it can be personal, and I take that seriously,” Lovato said. “While the decision itself was made deliberately, I recognize that how change is communicated and experienced matters. That perspective is important to me, and it’s something I carry forward as we continue to lead and improve how we support students through transitions.”