Meredith Raimondo Steps Down from Dean of Students Role Six Weeks Ahead of Schedule

Anisa Curry Vietze, Editor-in-Chief|April 9, 2021

Courtesy of Meredith Raimondo

Associate Professor of Comparative American Studies and former Vice President and Dean of Students Meredith Raimondo left Oberlin in October for a position as Vice President for Student Affairs at Oglethorpe University.

Former Vice President and Dean of Students Meredith Raimondo stepped down from her administrative position earlier this week, according to an email President Carmen Twillie Ambar sent to students this past Monday. 

In January, President Ambar announced that Raimondo would leave the Dean of Students position at the end of the spring semester; this recent announcement comes just six weeks before she originally planned to leave the role. Raimondo will continue to teach her Bridging the Gap course through the end of the semester, when she will take a sabbatical and return to Oberlin as a faculty member in the 2022–2023 academic year. 

“Meredith, every day, was working on behalf of Oberlin students,” said Chief of Staff David Hertz. “That’s one of the things that made her so valuable here, and she will be missed.”

Though no one has been officially appointed as Interim Dean of Students, President Ambar explained that the Office of the Dean of Students and the Division of Student Life will be taken care of as the College conducts its hiring search.

“The College has engaged the national search firm Isaacson-Miller to identify potential candidates to fill the VPDOS position,” President Ambar’s email read. “In the interim, Adrian Bautista, Assistant Vice President for Student Life, will manage the Student Life Division. I’ve asked David Hertz, Chief of Staff, to support Adrian as we move forward.” 

Hertz feels confident that the Division of Student Life will stay afloat while the search is conducted. 

“We’re lucky to have Adrian Bautista as assistant vice president and we will be depending upon him to … do a great job helping to run Student Life for the rest of this semester and through the summer,” Hertz said. “This is a unique time at Oberlin. We’ve never had a summer semester like this and we are recovering from the COVID pandemic, but at the same time, we’ve got a really strong team at Student Life.”

At this time, the College cannot comment on what drove the decision for Raimondo to take leave, or who made the decision.