Saint Rose Announces Close

Shock and disbelief has turned to anger as Saint Rose students continue to seek answers about last week’s sudden announcement that the school would close by the end of the spring semester, and many have expressed continued frustration at a lack of transparency and few answers to their questions.

Many students have frustrations with President Marcia White due to her not apparently understanding their frustrations. One student stated “She doesn’t understand the anger of the students because she’s still getting her check at the end of the day.” 

On Monday, Dec. 4, 40 students met outside the Huether Business building to protest the school’s closing, which was covered by local television news stations. The protest was loud but peaceful and lasted for approximately 70 minutes, with students carrying signs saying things like “Don’t trust the board of Trustees,” and chanting “what do we want? TRUTH.”

“I’m mad. I’m really mad, because as a student with a disability, it’s very hard to find academic institutions that have equal access for people with disabilities,” said Dan Hanrahan, a history education transfer at the school. “I think we need to get our voices heard and also get into the nitty gritty about what’s going on with our finances and where our tuition money is going,” he said. 

One point of frustration among students is that in her talks with various groups, White has seemed more fixated on her anger about how the news was revealed than answering the many questions members of the community have about how all this happened.

On Nov. 29, the Times Union published a front-page story with the headline “The College of Saint Rose is teetering on the edge of closure,” which led to a request by the faculty to have White and Provost Margaret McLane attend an online faculty meeting later that afternoon that had already been planned to take place. 

During the meeting, White answered numerous faculty questions, and ultimately said nothing would be decided until the Board of Trustees met on Thursday. She discussed how the administration had been exploring potential mergers or partnerships with other institutions, none of which had been finalized to any degree, and said she could not explain more because of non-disclosure agreements.

White said she would hold a community meeting on Friday, Dec. 1 to share what the board had voted on in Thursday’s meeting.

On Thursday, Nov. 30, shortly after the Board of Trustees finished meeting, Channel 13 News broke the story that the board voted to close Saint Rose at the end of the spring semester, citing unnamed sources. Several other news outlets followed with the news, with TV news on campus shortly after getting student reactions. Students are frustrated with finding out about the school’s closure through the news outlets instead of the President and Board of Trustees. 

Roughly two hours after the breaking news, White sent a school-wide email confirming the closure. “It is truly upsetting that this sensitive and highly confidential information was leaked to and shared by the media in advance, particularly since so much of the information that was shared was inaccurate and misleading. It is also truly devastating to know how much unnecessary distress this information has caused our Saint Rose community,” she wrote.

It was widely known that the college has had a declining enrollment over the past several years, brought on by large-scale demographic trends that have seen fewer college-age students than in the past, and exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. The college also cut several programs in recent years and had laid off faculty in those programs in order to shore up its finances.

“I think it’s a long time coming, but it should have been announced to the public way sooner than it has. I mean, this administration has known about the school failing for a long, long time, and they just didn’t tell anybody,” said Izzy Mero, a political and history major. 

“They did it in the worst way possible. They could have been a lot more transparent. The amount of people that are losing their jobs and people who are losing their education is disgusting,” said Jaleah Tirse, a political science major. 

Even just two weeks ago, when The Chronicle wrote a story about enrollment and retention, the reporter was assured that the school had met its numbers for enrollment and retention this fall, although nobody would provide actual hard numbers.

In October, the school pulled out of the Fitch bond rating system and the BB rating it had, a fact that went largely unreported at the time and which the school did not announce.

Many found Friday’s community meeting in Massry disappointing, in part because it lasted barely 30 minutes. White and Board President Jeffrey Stone read statements, with White saying a FAQ page on the website would be created to answer questions, and did not take any questions from the audience. While they read their prepared remarks, which included mentioning the failed efforts at finding merger partners and White’s complaints about inaccuracies in the Times Union article, the crowd of students, teachers, and staff was restless and occasionally noisy. Many of them were angry, and several people started shouting comments at the president and the chairman.

Mero attended the event that addressed the school’s closure. “I found it really disheartening and frankly disgusting that she told us to show some respect. When we pay her salary, we pay all of their salaries,” they said. “I’m fortunately graduating this fall. But there are still so many faculty and staff and students who are going to have to find new places to go to school, and especially with political science majors,” said Mero.  

School officials apparently did not expect the overflow crowd that came to the meeting, and had to scramble to get speakers for the crowd in the atrium, and even then many were locked outside because more people were not allowed in.

“I think they handled it in the worst way possible. I think they’ve known that this was coming for a very long time and that they willingly chose to keep it in the dark, and it just came out this way,” said Haley Weingarten, a political science major. 

In a faculty meeting that White and McLane attended at 1 p.m. they addressed many questions from the audience, and toward the end, White had an animated exchange with Visiting Assistant Professor of Communications Jessica Otitigbe, who asked White to “speak her truth.” Otitigbe stated “closing the campus didn’t just happen overnight, this has been in the works for quite some time and I think that you owe it to us, you owe it to the students, you owe it to the employees, to be more accountable and really just speak your truth because this is ridiculous.” Her comments drew a loud round of spontaneous applause from attendees. 

Over the weekend many students were active on social media, more specifically the Saint Rose Snapchat story. Students took to the social media platform as a way to post information regarding things such as the protest, the meeting, the 990 report published by Propublica that showed the school’s expenses in 2021, which included the fact that the school was still paying former president Carolyn Stefanco, who left the college in June 2020, approximately $500,000, making her the highest-paid employee (current or former) at Saint Rose that year. Students also posted  some nasty remarks directed  to the president along with the board of trustees. Students began making memes about the president along with the school, including ones that have made video edits involving people “begging” Marcia to tell us where our money went. 

On Monday Dec. 4, students gathered in front of the Huether business building to peacefully protest their concerns. The college shutting down suddenly leaves many students feeling hopeless during finals week. Many students showed up with signs saying things like “Don’t trust the board of Trustees,” “Home. of Dishonesty” and more. Students expressed their frustration at the meeting during  the protests. 

Many students in the community are left to figure out their future with only two weeks remaining in the semester. One student who wished to stay anonymous said, “My plan is I’m going to apply to get my teacher’s assistant certification because I have my associate’s degree, because at this point, I’m in so much debt that I can’t even afford to go back to college.”

Over the past few days, there have been many meetings for specific groups on campus; undergrad, graduate, faculty, and a parent webinar as well. Many students that attended have stated that it is simply a repetition of what was said in the meeting to announce the closure.

Other faculty members spoke during Friday’s faculty meeting,  simply looking for answers on why this wasn’t discussed sooner along with the fact that there has been no communication from the school despite repeated requests to talk to faculty in prior weeks and months. 

 A few professors have spoken out regarding the situation. Liz Richards, the faculty RepCom chair and a professor in the communications department, said about White “She  gave us false hope. I believe that she didn’t have a lot of information, but as my colleague Jessie says, this didn’t happen overnight. It didn’t happen within eight hours.” 

Students also had the opportunity to speak to White in a meeting where many students have directly explained their frustration and anger. Many of these interactions were posted to social media platforms and have gone viral, including a student in the music department who said when he got here he was unaware that the program was cut and now that the school is closing he has nowhere to go. 

Chairs of departments met with the administration on Dec. 4 to discuss the plans for teach-out programs, which the school is legally required to provide. Teach-out programs of participating schools allow students to attend the teach-out school at the same rate as they paid at the school that closed and to have as many of their credits transferred in order to make graduation as efficient and timely as possible. Chairs are supposed to have suggested schools for particular majors submitted by the end of the week.