DAN QUAGLIANA
News Editor
There’s 13 things that have been on everyone’s mind here at Fredonia — the 13 majors that have been proposed to be cut from the university’s offerings. What remains unclear is how things got to this point.
It’s well-known to the campus community that Fredonia’s been going through budget problems for about a decade, but this is the first time that significant changes have been made to the way that the university is planning to operate. Cutting majors, and thus refusing to offer them to prospective students, is an entirely different ballpark than something like not renewing the contract with Tim Hortons two years ago.
The first sign that something big was about to happen was revealed during the University Senate meeting on Dec. 4, 2023, where President Stephen Kolison said that he was, “looking forward to having a [meeting] with the campus sometime [that] week … about the future of the university.” He didn’t reveal any more information about the meeting at that time.
The meeting in question was hosted by the president on Dec. 6, 2023, two days later. In the meeting, he announced that, in order to save costs due to our budget deficit, the university had made the decision to no longer offer 13 different majors. At the end of the meeting, the president declined to answer questions from the audience, leaving most people who attended it confused.
The majors that have been proposed to be discontinued are:
- BA Visual Arts New Media: Art History
- BA French
- BA French Adolescence Education
- BS Industrial Management
- BS Mathematics: Middle Childhood Specialist (grades five through nine)
- BA Philosophy
- BA Sociology
- BA Spanish
- BA Spanish: Adolescence Education
- BFA Visual Arts and New Media: Ceramics
- BFA Visual Arts and New Media: Photography
- BFA Visual Arts and New Media: Sculpture
- BSED Early Childhood Education (birth – second grade)
The reason given for these proposed cuts was because the SUNY Board of Trustees had just announced a new budget for the SUNY system on Dec. 5, 2023. Despite the state legislature giving them $163 million in additional funding, the Board only gave $2.8 million of it to Fredonia.
This amount isn’t enough to fill the university’s deficit alone, which has been said by various campus administrators to range anywhere from $21 million to $9 million per year.
It also came as a surprise to many in the community that seemingly no one outside of the President’s Cabinet was consulted before this was announced to the public.
Every faculty member that The Leader has reached out to has expressed that they both disagree with the logic used to determine which programs would be discontinued, and that they have no idea what that logic is to begin with.
It’s a common belief among faculty and staff that the administration didn’t seem to know what they were doing when they selected the programs for discontinuation.
The Leader also contacted the University Senate’s Planning and Budget Committee. They did not give out any information, citing their confidentiality agreement, which restricts what they can release to the public, “especially when dealing with personnel reductions, reallocation or staffing models.”
On Dec. 7, 2023, the day after the president’s presentation, Kolison hosted a meeting of the Student Cabinet, a group made up of the Student Association Executive Board, the four undergraduate class presidents and a graduate student representative.
When asked about how it was determined which programs would be recommended for discontinuation, the president said, “[Executive Vice President and P]rovost Dr. [David] Starrett, came up with some criteria, and he shared that with a group of individuals on campus saying to look at the criteria that would be used to look at these programs. There was some input to that, and the provost adjusted the criteria, then applied the criteria, and then identified the programs.”
Kolison did not specify what the criteria was or who the “group of individuals” who looked at it consisted of.
He was also asked about the lack of transparency regarding the process with the rest of the campus, and he said, “So the issue of transparency is really not, to me, much of an issue there. It’s more of, if we had just decided, say, last month, and then [said] that these are cut, and that’s it, yes, someone would say that ‘you didn’t give us a chance to look at the formula, you didn’t give us a chance to give us advice, and so you were not transparent in the process.’ So when someone says we’re not transparent, I will have to disagree with that.”
As of the writing of this article, almost no new information has been released by the university.
Students have taken it upon themselves to voice their disapproval about the proposed discontinuations.
On Dec. 7, 2023, a protest outside Maytum Hall was organized by two students, Benjamin Evans and Alexander Fisher. A new student organization called Students for Fredonia has also been created. Led by co-presidents Sophie Myers and Abigail Tartaro, the group advocates for students, faculty and staff both on and outside of campus.
Over the course of the semester, as new information becomes available, The Leader will publish more articles on this issue to keep the campus informed.