Tag Archives: need-blind wes

FEATURED
Students Petition President Roth to Change Financial Aid Donation Policy

 financial-aid-101

A little under a week ago, I posted a video in which Josh Krugman ’14 took the microphone at a senior class reception and, immediately following speeches by University administrators exhorting members of the senior class to donate to Wesleyan, asked his fellow seniors to not donate in protest of the University’s abandoning of need-blind admissions and alleged fiscal irresponsibility. The post generated a debate over whether alumni should give to the University – informed in part by a recent letter from alumni who withheld donations on “Giving Tuesday” due to the University’s financial aid policies.

This post was followed immediately by a post by pyrotechnics about the 68% figure referenced in Josh’s speech. This post shed light on a serious problem with the way the University deals with financial aid donations:

There is currently no way for donors to increase the amount of money the University plans to spend on financial aid. Given the budget cap, there is no such mechanism for that right now, confirmed to me by President Michael Roth himself. (Again, note that there is a way to decrease the amount of money spent: not donating.) This is something I (wearing a different hat) am currently working on fixing with University Relations, with tentative support from both President Roth and Barbara-Jan Wilson.

In response to this and the fact that the number of students on grant-based matriculation aid fell this past year, Benny Docter ‘14, Danny Blinderman ’14, and Josh Krugman ’14 presented a letter to the administration calling for a revision to the financial aid donation policy. This letter, cosigned by WSA leadership, campus group leaders, student fundraisers, Greek-life presidents, and others, makes two simple demands on the administration:

1) Donors should be able to specify that 100% of their gift goes to increase financial aid for the following school year; 2) Donors should be able to specify that 100% of their gift goes into the endowment for financial aid, to be drawn at a rate equal to the annual draw rate of the endowment as a whole, and could be spent only on permanently increasing the number and quality of financial aid packages that the University offers.

The idea is that any donation made in this new manner would result in an increase in financial aid spending proportional to the size of the gift – as opposed to the current system, where all donations received are already planned for in the financial aid budget. The letter does not call for a boycott on donations to financial aid, nor does it ask for a return to need-blind admissions. Rather, it demands that the University allow those who donate to financial aid to increase financial aid spending as a total portion of the University budget in the same way that alumni donations to athletic programs or academic departments do not result in a corresponding decrease in the funding those programs receive from the University.

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The 68 Percent Figure: Where Did It Come From?

I have been pleasantly surprised to see a few comments on recent articles asking for a source on the 68% figure that has been flying thick and heavy around need-blind conversations lately. For context, here is an excerpt from a recent controversial speech about donating to Wesleyan:

“Did you know that 68% of any donation earmarked for financial aid gets swept into the general operating budget, and that only 32% of such donations goes to improving the financial aid budget?”

That 68% figure was first circulated in a document produced by Need Blind Wes and distributed during Homecoming Weekend. It is profoundly shocking that the majority of a specified donation would somehow be weaseled into unrestricted funds, isn’t it? Isn’t that illegal?

Well, yes, that would be illegal — except the 68% figure is just flat-out false as described. Incorrect. Inaccurate. Wrong. Or, at the very least, incredibly misleading.

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FEATURED
“Bring Us Into the Conversation”: Students Occupy Board of Trustees Meeting

Yesterday, at 1:20, concerned students met to plan an action to communicate the importance of need-blind admissions to the Board of Trustees, who were on campus this weekend for an official retreat. At 6:30, the meeting was reprised, with an extra dose of urgency: “Nobody has this covered; it’s not being taken care of by someone else. It’s just us, your classmates and neighbors, and as many of you can make it.” At noon today, students gathered outside of Usdan, wearing red and finishing up a banner while some brandished cameras. By 12:30, they were in a trustees’ meeting—telling them directly that students want to be included in the conversation.

The video at the top of this post includes much of the climax of the action; after the majority of students ended up going to the Daniel Family Commons, some unfurled the aforementioned banner—reading “BRING US INTO THE CONVERSATION”—outside the meeting room, while others attempted to enter. Public Safety guarded the main entrance while students sat in the open doorway, but a small group bypassed and made it inside the meeting, where they spoke to concerns about need-blind admissions and decision-making transparency.

Watch the video yourself to form your own take on the Board members’ responses to the latest installment in, as one trustee put it, Wesleyan students’ “long and storied” history of entering closed-door meetings. Because legendary camera operator Ben Doernbeard ’13 was… held up at the door, the first couple minutes of conversation with the trustees are hard to catch, but a good portion of it is audible—turn up the volume, just to be sure.

Check out photos of the action (courtesy of our very own wieb$) on Facebook, or click past the jump to see them here, along with a couple extra shots of the banner by Zach.

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Support Need-Blind On Your Way To Pi

A message from Need-Blind Dumbledore’s Army Direct Action :

Are you looking for a quick and easy way to contribute to the Need-Blind campaign? Do you have hands? Then come to the Exley lobby Friday at 2:30pm to help turn 12 yards of felt into 2,800 red squares raising awareness about Need-Blind! You can stay for five minutes or for five hours (although we’ll be long gone by then).

Red squares are a worldwide symbol of accessible education; here at Wesleyan students have been writing their own messages about Need-Blind in black sharpie (school colors dontcha know).

We’ll provide the red felt, some safety pins and a few sharpies, but we could really use more safety pins and sharpies.

See you at 2:30,

Some people who might not be here without Need-Blind.

Date: September, 21
Time: 2:30 p.m.
Place: Exley lobby

Wespeak: “Need-Blind Admissions: The Price Tag of Equality”

Wespeak, banner drop, Facebook page, and more.

This week, shortly after Sunday’s student meeting, Benny Doctor ’14 and Leonid Liu ’14 coauthored a Wespeak in support of need-blind admissions. They’ve asked Wesleying to repost it. Since it’s relevant, I’m including footage of today’s “NEED BLIND STAYS” banner drop, which appeared in Usdan today shortly after the lunch rush. According to the Usdan worker tasked with removing it, “That was the biggest Usdan banner violation I’ve ever seen.”

Although we come from very different backgrounds, neither of us would be here today had President Roth’s proposed need-aware admissions policy been in place when we were applying for college. For that reason, and many others, we oppose a need-aware Wesleyan.

Until now, the administration’s discussion about need-blind admissions has been almost exclusively focused on the University’s financial challenges. We recognize that coming up with a feasible alternative financial plan is necessary to preserve need-blind admissions. However, we believe that it is important to recognize that this policy also has adverse moral, cultural, and academic implications.

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