“We believe it is is not ethically responsible at this time for us as alumni to financially support an institution that is not willing to properly ensure the safety and respect of its student body.”
Confirming reports from Homecoming Weekend that a significant number of alumni are aware of and unhappy about recent campus controversies surrounding sexual assault and need-blind admissions, Wesleying received the following letter from members of the class of 2010. The note has been circulating via email among recent alums. In it, Anonymous ’10 expresses “serious concerns regarding two recent, unsettling missteps taken by Wesleyan University” and asks hir classmates to pledge not to donate. No doubt this suggestion will be controversial on campus (particularly in the arena of need-blind, where Wesleyan’s meager alumni giving rate is especially pertinent). No doubt it will also grab attention.
Some alumni have already defended their unwillingness to donate in the comments section of recent posts. Wesleying is interested in following up with a longer feature. If you’re an alumnus who won’t donate to the school and want to talk about it—or a caller for Red & Black—please contact us at staff(at)wesleying(dot)org.
Here’s the letter:
Dear fellow alumni,
We are writing to express serious concerns regarding two recent, unsettling missteps taken by Wesleyan University, and are asking you to reconsider the type of support you currently offer to our alma mater.
In the past year, Wesleyan has failed to provide proper support for survivors of rape and sexual harassment that occurred on campus. It appears to us that university officials are allowing their public relations concerns to take priority over the health and well-being of their students by attempting to diminish the criminality and severity of cases of sexual abuse and harassment for the sake of lessing the public visibility of these offenses. They have quietly stood aside while acts of rape and sexual harassment occurred out of concern for negative publicity—and this displays a hypocritical and disgusting failure to combat rape culture.
We are additionally frustrated by Wesleyan’s decision to no longer be a need-blind institution in its admissions decision process. This is an act of racism and classism. Wesleyan’s choice to implement this new policy will act as a detriment to the dignity and quality of the education and community offered by our former school.
We believe it is is not ethically responsible at this time for us as alumni to financially support an institution that is not willing to properly ensure the safety and respect of its student body. In this moment, money given to Wesleyan is money given to supporting rape culture, racism, and sexism, as the university itself has made it clear that financial concerns take precedence over combating these things.
When Red & Black calls you in the coming months, we beg you to give nothing. While our donations are not a major source of financial support for the University, they do play a large role in the very public relations that the university is attempting to maintain by sweeping these cases of abuse and discrimination under the rug. And please, when you refuse to donate, explain why to the caller. If enough of us refuse to donate, and offer a clear explanation of why we currently feel donating is unethical we may be able to counteract Wesleyan’s abhorrent actions.
For more information about the specifics of the events of the year, please look to the links we have listed below. Please forward widely.
Courant: “Federal Lawsuit Says Wesleyan Failed To Protect Woman From Assault At Fraternity House Called A ‘Rape Factory'”
Wesleying: “Wesleyan is Great, Unless A Professor Sexually Harasses You”
Courant: “Faced With Rising Costs, Wesleyan University Drops ‘Need-Blind’ Financial Aid Policy”Please sign Holly Wood ’08 and Vincent Vecchione ’07’s petition here.
Most sincerely,
Select Members of the Class of 2010
Relevant:
Wesleying coverage: need-blind
Wesleying coverage: sexual assault
Pingback: NPR Report: Wesleyan Part of Larger Trend In Colleges’ Financial Woes – Wesleying
I say we cut intercollegiate sports. Wesleyan isn’t a sports school. Nobody goes here for sports. Intramural sports are great for fitness and teamwork and so on, and are relatively cheap – we can keep those. But competitive intercollegiate teams are just money pits that take people who already have exemplary fitness and distract them from their studies.
Yes. The University is in a tough financial situation and has tried one way to fix it. Obviously, that way is not working; time to start looking at other options.
25% of Wesleyan is on a varsity team. Maybe you don’t enjoy sports, but other people do. How about cutting funds for concerts? I’m sure a lot of people don’t go, and besides, there’s enough talent on campus. Get rid of spring fling, too!
Okay. So that’s ~$120,000 in funding from the Student Activities Fee (an entirely separate, student controlled fee/fund that has not seen an increase in years, and will never increase again) that you just cut. What’s next?
I am also very wary and weary of the knee-jerk auto-response to cut sports, because as you say over 700 students are athletes. But the athletics budget is well into the millions and has very little transparency. Meanwhile, non-athletes are not even allowed to get ice at the trainers in Freeman.
While cutting athletics entirely seems a little drastic, from a non-athlete’s perspective (in this case, mine) there does seems to be some significant fat available for trimming in the athletics budget. Am I sure about that? No. But it does seem that way.
Okay. So you’ve cut ~$120,000 in funding from the Student Activities Fund — a fund that’s entirely separate and student controlled, the fees for which have not seen an increase in years and will never increase again. What’s next?
I am also extremely wary and weary of the knee-jerk auto-response to cut athletics because, as you mention, more than 700 hundred students are athletes. But the athletics budget is well in to the millions, and not at all transparent. Meanwhile, non-athletes can’t even get ice at the trainers for injuries. Concerts are open to all students; the services given to varsity athletes and paid for by the athletics budget are not.
Cutting athletics altogether, or even just varsity athletics, is a bit extreme. But from the outsider’s perspective as a non-athlete (in this case, me) there seems to be some fat available for trimming. Should the athletics budget be eliminated? No. But are there superfluities? Certainly looks that way.
There are definitely some places that I could see some trimming of the athletics budget, but as it is, my team was not one of the “favored” ones by the university and had to put in substantial hours of work outside of competition to raise funds to supplement our budget and buy the things we needed to compete. While I agree that anyone should be able to get ice from the trainers, injury care and advice is a somewhat different story. This is a very limited resource and there are two issues: first, the fact that even as a varsity athlete, my ability to get any time with or attention from the very small training staff was already quite limited. Second, liability issues could/would arise if the university allowed the trainers to provide care to everyone–athletes are subject to medical clearance by the trainers before competing, something that would be completely infeasible for everyone at Wesleyan given the limited nature of the trainers’ time.
tl/dr: some things can be cut but teams do earn a lot of money to support themselves as well.
In most part I agree. I was talking primarily about ice, although there are definitely times when the training staff isn’t doing much (say 10:30am on a Tuesday) and injured non-athlete students are told that they can’t even ask for advice. That doesn’t negate the liability concerns you mention, but you see my point.
The bottom line, though, is that there is room for trimming. Many teams make efforts to support themselves, some could do more in that regard. Equipment and travel costs could be reduced for many teams — what’s considered ‘necessary to compete’ for some is a little higher than it should be, in my view at least. At a time when every other budget on campus is lean but severely strained, athletics needs to share the burden as well.
The decision to cut need blind admissions was financial, how does it help to withhold contributions? Couldn’t it help to donate to scholarship funds instead?
Not giving because of how sexual assaults are handled makes sense to me, and I don’t wish to dismiss that aspect of the conversation. On the other hand, not giving because the college doesn’t have enough resources seems backwards.
I know some people are working on this already, but there really needs to be a fund that alumni, parents, students, faculty, and anyone else can support that would only be available to the university on the condition that the need-blind policy is re-instated. Otherwise, these anonymous commitments to not donate will only worsen the situation.
If alumni believe that Wesleyan is not currently an institution they can ethically support, then they should be able to commit to and support a future one that does uphold the ethical principles of accessibility they believe in.
it is already being researched
where did my comment go? I’m worrying about my financial aid package and now my comment is gone?
oops nvm
I donated two days ago. And I don’t regret my decision.
-recent alum
Might I ask why?
Because at the end of the day, this is about resources, and Wesleyan doesn’t have enough of them. The more money Wesleyan has, the more financial aid it can give. I didn’t give a lot of money, but I marked financial aid as my “highest priority” on the giving form. You can argue all you want about moral responsibility, transparency, chalking rights, etc., but at the end of the day, if Wesleyan had more money, we wouldn’t even be having this conversation, as the aid policy wouldn’t have been changed in the first place.
I see this as an interesting parallel to the US budget conversation going on right now. We’re broke, so let’s cut the vital that’s pretty darn important, like Veteran’s Benefits, health care, and all that stuff.
There’s practically zero parallel between the US budget and Wesleyan’s. The US can run a massive deficit in the “bad times,” whereas Wesleyan cannot afford to run a budget deficit of any magnitude. Some conservatives want to cut veteran’s benefits, health care, etc. because they don’t believe in a social safety net. Even if it can be afforded.
On the other hand, Wesleyan (and Pres. Roth, Board of Trustees, etc.) is removing 100% need-blind because it can’t afford it, not because of some ideological reasoning. As soon as the funds are there (though there has been zero transparency on when that will be) need-blind will be restored.
This is not about ideology. It’s about money, and a lack thereof (and a lack of transparency about future finances – current finances have been well explained).
I think there are some VERY important similarities between the two situations, and situations like it are happening all over the world. The people running the show in both situations are taking care of themselves first, and throwing the poor and middle class under the bus. In order to pay for high administrative salaries, a large private security force, living in luxury, new construction, and other things that are not really necessary to learning or gathering a group of highly motivated and highly creative individuals (in order to keep our “peer institutions” within that group of rather arbitrarily grouped elite universities), the administration is going to take care of the wealthy first, thereby undermining a key element of diversity which makes that incredible gathering of people possible in the first place. Nationally, we’re cutting social security, medicare, welfare, and other social programs in order to continue paying for war, prisons, and the entirely excessive lifestyles of the wealthy, thereby destroying the social fabric of our nation. I see many similarities–certainly different scales, but, if you do believe in what they teach in sociology classes, what’s happening at Wesleyan is not happening independent of these greater trends. And this greater trend of wealth flowing highly upward very quickly has a name: neoliberalism.
I want to add, of course there are big differences, too. One of them being that getting rid of need blind also, in a way, serves to preserve a good deal of material privilege of current Wesleyan students, and cutting welfare programs certainly doesn’t do that for current recipients. However, I do think that what goes along with this prioritizing business over learning at Wesleyan doesn’t even serve the most pampered students well, because, even if they’re living in luxury, the quality of their classes is worse, their ability to speak freely is inhibited, and they become a product of the University rather than a part of a community.
“In order to pay for high administrative salaries, a large private security force, living in luxury, new construction, and other things that are not really necessary to learning or gathering a group of highly motivated and highly creative individuals (in order to keep our “peer institutions” within that group of rather arbitrarily grouped elite universities)”
There are zero similarities, as I said. The goal of these cuts is so more POOR students can attend. I know, that doesn’t make sense, does it? In one sentence, it’s to increase the size of the endowment faster so that more aid can be offered going forward.
In many words: The cut was done to PRESERVE AID going forward. The result is shitty aid (read: non-need blind) for a number of years until the endowment grows. By growing the endowment at a faster rate (by slowing the rate of financial aid increases), Wesleyan can have an endowment more like the Amhersts and Pomonas of the world (but hopefully not the investment banking recruitment of those schools), where even WAITLIST and INTERNATIONAL admissions are need-blind (read: even better aid than before). The entire point of all of this, as I said, is to INCREASE access. I know it’s counter-intuitive to DECREASE access right now, but that’s so funds that are small now are large later.
The “high” administrative salaries are the market price for elite small liberal arts college positions. The “large” security force (which apparently isn’t large enough with recent campus events), new construction, etc. are expected of schools of Wesleyan’s caliber (for reasons I’ll mention in a minute). However, Roth shut down the proposed $160 million science center. Because we couldn’t afford it. Amherst is breaking ground on a $200 million science center. Because they can afford it on top of being need-blind. Roth cut those things to save need-blind back in 2008. Probably before you were at Wes. He cut other things so that need-blind could be preserved. But, alas, Wesleyan’s financial condition continued to erode.
Wes got into this mess in the first place because of overspending, which is why Roth cut the science center, the museum that was supposed to be the renovated squash building, and other projects. The budget was cut by $30 million in response to the recession. There is nothing left to cut except the academic core. Cutting salaries, as I said, are not an option – Wes is already below its peers for faculty salary, and one or two administrator salary eliminations isn’t going to bring back need-blind.
Why the sudden shift in policy, you ask? Because the Board finally realized that Wesleyan’s lack of financial resources are hurting it in attracting the best students, because it can’t afford to offer the most competitive aid packages (again, Wes has to put in more loans than comparable schools).
MOST IMPORTANTLY: And yes, it is all about keeping up with the Joneses. Why? Because otherwise, students of lesser talent, students with less drive, students with less ambition, will enroll at Wesleyan, because Wes won’t be looked at by the best and brightest. The very environment you cite as the strength of Wesleyan will be diminished if Wesleyan does not have the resources to maintain that environment and remain attractive. That is precisely why schools compare themselves, and while it may lead to an arms race of new buildings, etc., the result of not keeping up means that students who got into, say Wes and Vassar (Vassar is already wealthier and let’s assume it has a better student faculty ratio, better library, better med school advisor, etc.) – that student will choose Vassar. It’s not just about shiny buildings and plasma tvs – the arms race is also about lowering the student-faculty ratio, increasing the number of courses available, and funding internship opportunities (aka increasing learning opportunities).
This has nothing to do with maintaing privilege (though it does have that effect – but ONLY for the short term). It has everything to do with maintaining (and increasing!) access for the long run. Why is there an inability to see the benefits of this policy long term? Yes, it sucks short term. Terribly. But the benefits long-term outweight the negatives short-term. Wes can change its aid policy instantly, as soon as the money is there. Wes cannot, however, change its reputation instantly if it were to falter as a result of diminished resrouces.
YES, this policy sucks, and it increases privilege, as you said. But it’s to increase access even more than there was before, if you can sit tight just a few years. It’ll be okay, I promise.
The idea that this was done so Wes can afford to keep building shiny buildings and pay its administrators is completely off-base. It was done to increase access, over the LONG. TERM. I think I said that three times already, but it’s worth repeating.
Also, how is this prioritizing business over learning?
The difficulty is that all we’ve gotten for long-term commitments is vagueness. President Roth and others have clearly stated that the overarching goal of this policy change is to increase the long term financial sustainability of Wesleyan. And that makes sense; the math checks out, more or less. But there is no published (or even assembled, as far as I can tell) comprehensive plan on how and when to increase access over the long term. There is no timeline, not even in financial terms. There is no promise, no guarantee.
There are always incentives, with policies such as this, to sacrifice aid and access in the short term for the purpose of expanding it in the long term. Without a guarantee that ‘need-blind will return once X conditions are met,’ or ‘the discount rate will be K when Y conditions are met,’ the long-term aims of this policy can effectively be nullified by the administration and the Board. Students, faculty, and alumni have no real weight in these sorts of decisions. Tomorrow will always be just that, tomorrow. It is ever over the horizon. I want a guarantee, and I want it to be built by students and faculty and alumni and administrators, together.
So if the administration did offer a guarantee, would that really make a difference to those who so fiercely oppose need-aware?
thank you so much!
great, let’s not donate and make the situation even worse
It’s fascinating that the authors chose to remain anonymous. How can the administration – or the student body, for that matter – pursue an in-depth understanding of what these alum see as the issues and see as potential solutions? Of course “rape culture” is bad, but as pyrotechnics pointed out in hir commendable post the other day the administration has made progress. What would be an accomplishment that these alum would consider significant enough to encourage others to donate again? Also, what about the transparency that Roth should be credited with regarding the decision to end financial aid. Yes, there was a lack of transparency in the decision-making process, but isn’t the fact that, by ending need blind, Roth is openly admitting that the school is in a poor financial situation and needs help? He could have gone behind our backs and just directed admissions to look at zip codes and – while that would still officially make us “need blind” – it would be just as discriminatory (if not more) than officially changing the policy to include some need-aware decisions? To bring this back to the anonymity of the authors – how the fuck can we have the discussions with the entire Wesleyan community if people aren’t willing to put their names on opinion statements that *could* radically alter the campus climate?
Since it’s worth clarifying, here’s a note I received from one of the authors when I asked if I could include hir name:
“[name removed] and I wrote the actual letter together, but the idea to write it and the content in it came out of discussions with fellow alumns here in NYC and elsewhere, and we’re more into the idea of the letter coming from all of us than having our names on it. I’d be into doing an interview with my name attached if you wanted, however.”
Secondly, it’s pretty questionable how honest or transparent Roth has been about any aspect of this decision, particularly given the “15-20 students” figure that’s been floating around lately.
“He could have gone behind our backs and just directed admissions to look
at zip codes and – while that would still officially make us “need
blind” – it would be just as discriminatory (if not more) than
officially changing the policy to include some need-aware decisions?”
Obviously, everyone in support of need-blind wants an admissions process that is truly need-blind; we don’t want a process that consists of snatching up a few handfuls of token low-income students, weighing down most middle-class students with mountains of debt, and calling it socio-economic diversity (which Roth seems to imply that the administration has been doing for the past several years…). It’s not about patting ourselves on the backs and feeling like we’ve won a victory while the structural issues in higher education remain present; I don’t think anyone truly invested in this issue is that naive.
Obviously, things could be worse. But talking about what unethical things the administration could have done is totally irrelevant. What matters are the unethical polices the administration currently has in place. This is injustice in which our inaction acts as a tacit endorsement. Giving ourselves up to the economic imperative, admitting that its closed system of logic is the one in which this debate ultimately must come to rest, is conflating fiscal responsibility with moral responsibility. Ending donations is an act of moral, not financial responsibility, and that is precisely the point.
Alright, I’m going to throw my hat into this ring.
The University is cash-starved. Thus, the Wesleyan administration’s primary concern at this point of time is to try to find ways to maintain and develop a money base that will allow them to do their job, which is to provide a liberal arts education according to a certain set of values. In other words, it has to find ways to survive in order to keep doing what it’s doing. In that pursuit, the university possesses two broad strategic directions, which can and should be taken simultaneously: to increase cash in-flow and to cut as much spending as possible in areas that they cannot practically bear.
The university has thus far pushed a number of moves on both fronts. However, many of these moves are controversial. The university has opted to make investments in certain morally dodgy areas to increase the cash in-flow (catalyzing the emergence of the Committee for Investor Responsibility), and now has made a push for cutting need-blind (which has sprung up this entire conversation).
As we have come to be quite familiar with, the core tension here is the following: should the university compromise some of the fundamental values it purports to hold in the pursuit of survival? To put it another way: is it better to survive but become something completely different, or to struggle to commit to your original values but risk very possible end to your institutional existence?
Indeed, it is my understanding that these questions lie at the periphery of a much deeper question: “What the fuck is the point of Wesleyan?”
There was a time in our history when Wesleyan were affiliated with fiercely socially liberal values. These values included (but certainly are not limited to) a commitment to educational accessibility, to societal diversity, to free speech, to the unburdened pursuit of art and knowledge, to academic excellence, and to the pure cultivation of its students. Furthermore, there was also a commitment to a higher value that transcended mere materiality. There was a sense that it is imperative that those who should walk the halls of Olin were not only the people who could afford it, but for everybody who deserved a chance at a good education.
But a university has its core practical responsibilities as well. A university is responsible for allowing its students to achieve gainful employment, for the securing the safety of the environment, and for being there when students need help in any and all forms.
I submit that this should be the point of Wesleyan. Of course, you are free to hold your own views. You are perfectly free to believe that Wesleyan matters more as a physical institution, and that it should remain no matter how far away it drifts from the values and responsibilities it purports to hold. If this is the case, then I suggest you stop reading – in case you haven’t already.
Now, I have been following these developments quite closely, and a few things have come to my mind. Firstly, it seems to me that the administration is making the argument that the option to cut need-blind is absolutely imperative. That, under all these financial burdens, this is the only way to open enough breathing space. Is this true? I cannot say myself, for I am not privy to the accounting at hand. Secondly, surely it is the case that spending cuts can be made elsewhere in far less vital places. Surely we do not need all the amenities we seem to be getting – are flat-screen TV’s in residence halls and classrooms the most cost-effective and productive ways of enhancing an educational experience? Do we really need flashy new construction projects? Does expanding the student body really cover the cash in-flow problem, or does it exacerbate it instead?
And finally, why is President Roth doing an excruciatingly horrendous job at community engagement and communication? Aren’t we in the same fucking boat?
But let me get to the point of why I started writing this whole thing in the first place. I fully defend the alums’ move to cease their donations. My reasoning is simple: while I understand that our donations may be vital to the supply of the university’s cash in-flow, it is also a tacit form of approval for the policies that the university enacts in its pursuit to stay afloat. In other words, if I give you my money, you might and probably will take that as an indication that I approve of the moves you are making. And it just so happens that I absolutely disagree with the direction that this university is moving to.
Yes, I have a commitment to my alma mater. But my commitment is not blind. It is not uncritical. To rephrase it in more honest terms: I have a commitment to the ideals I once shared with my alma mater. Right now, at this point of time, with Wesleyan’s failure to address sexual assaults, to practice the building of a sense of community and solidarity, and to make good moral decisions to stay afloat, I cannot support you. I will not support you. I will not allow you to lie to me.
Now, I graduated this past spring. And let me tell you, the emails asking for donations came very, very quickly. I graduated in the immediate aftermath of the Holi incident, where the university failed to take a normative stance on the matter, and right as all this shit was about to kick in. I graduated at a ceremony where the president gave what was ultimately a tepid speech, a speech full of cliches and tropes and empty pieces of inspirational advice. A speech that was all flash, no substance. A speech that perhaps represented what Wesleyan is to become.
I love this place. To the very fiber of my being, I do. There has not been a day where I have not thought about how it felt to be a member of the community there. And so, it is with a heavy heart that I implore you, whoever you are, to remember why you are part of this community, and what you want from this community.
Keep talking. Don’t shut down the conversation. The great comic Louis CK once said (to Jon Stewart, no less) that “all conversation is good conversation.” We can find a way. We just need to keep looking, and to do that, we have to keep talking. Good luck. I know you can do it.
– An old friend of Wesleying
Please send this to the Argus as a Wespeak. That is all.
If you are willing, please contact me (pyrotechnics) at staff[at]wesleying[dot]org. This isn’t necessarily for a Wesleying interview (though that would be cool too) but is really for the other hat I wear. I’d like to talk.
As ’10 noted below, it is obligation of the university to prove to alumni that it is a worthy of their donations. Would you give money to a mediocre non-profit in the hopes of making it better, even if you were once associated with it? Or would you rather give money to a great non-profit because you know they will use that money positively, and in a manner that is in line with your own values?
It is not the job of alumni to give money to the university in the hopes of making it better; it is the job of the university to prove that it is dedicated to upholding its own standards, and to making itself better, and then to ask alumni to support that endeavor. The burden of responsibility is clear.
I have an opinion.
This is not a productive way to go about this, and is not related to on-campus efforts to maintain Need-Blind. Also, this statement is patently incorrect: “our donations are not a major source of financial support for the University.”
Any alternative plan promoted by the student Need-Blind effort will include efforts at getting more money donated for financial aid, not less.
Which is precisely why these people are witholding their donations until there is a commitment that those values of diversity and accessibility across class lines will be upheld. It is ludicrous to continue sinking money into an organization that is cash starved and expect it to do what you want. What does make sense is financially incentivizing the desired outcome by making your contributions conditional.
What most Wesleyan kids do not understand (in this case and in general) is there is no magic money tree you can shake when things need to be paid for. All that great stuff on campus costs money. Times have changed and Wesleyan seems to be trying to put systems in place so the school is not bankrupt. Roth also committed to not raise tuition more than inflation. You would have thought other NESCAC schools would have followed suit, but they did not.
Not giving money to Wesleyan is not going to change anything. It is only going to make the financial problem worse.
Bottom line, Wesleyan kids need to realize that stomping your feet does not get you what you want like it did when you were a kid. The world is not fair sometimes.
Roth has already gone back on his promise to tie tuition to inflation — see his comments at the parents Q&A video featured on this blog.
But more importantly, the argument that not giving is going to “make the problem worse,” is horrid cop-out. It is deeply irresponsible to give money to an organization in the hopes that it will get better, with no guarantee, especially when that giving in response to what is essentially a threat by the university — “See, look what happens when we don’t have enough money.” The university uses the revocation of needs-blind and the invisibilization of rape as tool to maintain finance and PR. As alumni, it is our responsibility to remove the value in making those decisions, by responding with actions that hurt finance and hurt PR.
these are alums..
Actually, the budget sustainability task force has been working enormous hours to track down the magic money tree and figure out how best to shake it. According to Wilbur Fisk’s last will and testament, it is somewhere between Fountain and the Tomb: http://is.gd/Xj3Oke
People need to understand that the decision to remove need-blind isn’t one that the administration is happy with. It is one that is necessary to retain the quality of education at Wesleyan, as well as to maintain benefits for visiting and full-time professors.
it’s funny that your username and comment both assume that people haven’t heard the point you’re making, yet if you had listened to the protesters or attended the meetings, you would already have heard many responses to this point, and you wouldn’t assume that kids hadn’t thought about it… i.e. YES, what you’re saying IS as obvious as you think…
sasa
Why does anyone think this is a good thing? The reason Wesleyan is being forced to remove the need-blind policy is because we can’t afford it. Calling for alumni to stop donating will only make the situation worse. Get a grip.
don’t think that will get them to see it your way. i thought the same thing, though, and it definitely worries me. seems more like a good threat that need not be carried out… withholding money doesn’t help anyone and it doesn’t really hurt the administration much… their salaries are the most rigid part of the budget
Why does anyone think this is a good thing? The reason the administration is being forced to remove need-blind is because Wesleyan can’t afford it. Calling for alumni to stop donating will only make things worse.
Why does anyone think that this is a good thing? The reason need-blind is being removed is because we can’t afford it. Calling for alumni to stop donating will only make the situation worse. Stop being idiots, please.