President Marcia White and Chairman of the Board of Trustees Jeffrey Stone spoke to an overflow crowd in the Massry Center on Dec. 1 about the school’s plan to close by the end of the spring 2024 semester.
White expressed anger that the news of the closing broke the night before by Channel 13 News, shortly after the board voted, , saying “If I weren’t so mad about the way you’ve heard this information, rather than hearing it today from us, I’d be in tears.”
The two prepared speeches lasted for just over 30 minutes and neither took questions from a restive and sometimes vocal audience of students, staff and faculty, many of which were infuriated while some became frustrated emotionally and began making negative comments toward the president and chairman.
Many students were upset by the fact that the auditorium was filled even before the meeting was supposed to start and they had to stand in the atrium to listen to the speeches by speakers that had been hastily put in.
The meeting started off with Stone stating “Yesterday, the board of trustees voted to announce that The College of Saint Rose will complete the current 2023-2024 academic year…but at the conclusion of the spring semester, our beloved 103-year-old college will shut its doors.”
Stone continued to talk about the recent decline in enrollment due to the shrinking population of college-bound students. Stone also discussed the struggle of other smaller colleges throughout the Northeast, without naming any institutions.
The crowd erupted with boos and yelling seconds after Chairman Stone stated “The Board of Trustees and college leadership has been transparent about these financial challenges.” The tension in the auditorium was palpable while students and faculty responded angrily, with many shouting that the college had not told the truth regarding the extent of its financial straits.
President White then took over the meeting, reiterating everything that the chairman previously said. White began to criticize inaccuracies in recent news articles in the Times Union, saying that information released to the public was false. “The reports the college can not pay its bill and that our request for immediate funding is also untrue,” she said. “The College has significant and sufficient financial resources to complete the 2023-2024 academic year.” Her statement was followed by a continuation of negative phrases and yelling from the crowd.
White read from her prepared statement, explaining how the college had been exploring affiliate or merger options with a number of potential educational institutions. “For more than a year, the college engaged in preliminary discussion with a number of higher education institutions identified by our consultants to explore potential affiliations, partnerships, mergers, and other possible relationships,” she said.
“At the same time, the college leadership and the board work to identify and secure alternative sources of financial support,” White said.
That information, which she had first explained to faculty during an online faculty meeting on Wednesday, when the Times Union article that claimed the school was on the verge of closing came out, indicated to many that the possibility of the school closing has been in process for much longer than the campus community was led to believe.
In the summer, when news of the accreditation warning came out in which Middle States put the school in “jeopardy” status and requested more clarifying materials regarding the school’s financial status and its assessment processes, reports due by Jan. 16, 2024, the campus community was assured that all was well and losing accreditation was not an immediate threat.
However, in October the school withdrew from the Fitch bond rating system, a fact that went unreported by the media at the time and which the school did not publicly announce, nor did White discuss it during the community meeting.. Marcia concluded by saying they do not have all the answers but there has been a FAQ page added on the Saint Rose website that will be updated to answer any questions. She left the stage quickly after that, not taking any questions.
As people filed out of the auditorium, many attendees seemed stunned by the presentation, in part because no new information was provided beyond what had appeared in local media reports about the school’s problems. There was an eerie gloom surrounding the Massry building this afternoon as no questions were answered and little to no light was shed on the situation.
The Chronicle will have an updated story about the school closing in next week’s issue on Dec. 7 and online, the last issue of the semester, and promises to stay abreast of news as it unfolds next semester so the campus community is as well-informed as possible and so you are getting the unvarnished truth..
