ALEXANDER BUCKNAM
Special to The Leader
On March 6, Students for Fredonia (SFF) and the Student Association (SA) held a town hall meeting welcoming all students and faculty to come address their questions and concerns about the administration.
The purpose of this town hall meeting was for SA President Rosemarie Rapisarda, Chief Justice Bethany Anderson and Sophomore Class President Dakota Richter to take students and faculty’s growing questions and concerns about the administration, recent program cuts and mental health support.
Rapisarda plans to take the questions and concerns from the meeting to the administration to get answers.
There will be an additional meeting on March 27 with the administration at 7 p.m. at the Kelly Auditorium in the Science Center. At this March 27 meeting, the administration will answer questions and address the concerns that students and faculty have.
The town hall gathering opened with SFF Co-Vice President Benjamin Evans giving a speech in which he talked about the program cuts, how they affect a majority of students all across campus and how important student activism is.
Evans started his speech by telling a fictional story about a high school superintendent who wanted to retile the floor of a cafeteria, but then got baffled when the janitors imputed their opinion on what color the floor should be. The superintendent of the high school responded by saying, “What do janitors know about tiles?”
“I think the SUNY chancellor is making the same mistake, where that superintendent didn’t understand why people who worked on the floor tiles every day would know something about them,” Evans said.
He then went on to mention how the administration is moving forward with cutting all 13 programs, and how SFF has yet to see any financial data to support these cuts.
“Most of these programs are composed of classes that already support other programs. Others are satellite programs that support larger programs,” Evans said.
He ended his speech by talking about how important student activism is.
“We are the only ones who can’t be fired for speaking out. We are the only ones who are allowed to do what we need to do,” Evans said.
Henry Domst, a senior graphic design and art history student, was the next to take the stage.
Domst originally came to Fredonia for graphic design, but later on added a second major in art history because he was passionate about it and liked the professors who taught the classes.
His case is not the only one; multiple students who take a class in the Visual Arts and New Media (VANM) program and get hooked later on add it on as a second major or a minor.
During his speech, he mentioned how students who have a second major in the programs that are being cut aren’t being counted for the number of affected students.
He also talked about the administration not informing students of SFF’s work.
“We are trying to further this problem and let people know what we are trying to do, but it’s hard when I applied to be on [Fredonia’s] campus report when we went to Albany and we are still not yet on it,” Domst said.
Domst also discussed how the administration doesn’t want to display what SFF is doing, stating, “It’s really dangerous to ignore these types of issues and not display them to the entire campus, because then they have no idea what is going on … Silencing our activism on this campus just shouldn’t happen in the first place. If we can’t inform the campus of what we are doing, who can we be acknowledged by?” Domst said.
Domst went on and talked about how students have yet to receive a formal apology.
He also talked about the mental effects students are experiencing. According to Domst, students within the majors that are being cut are currently having mental health crises.
“Dealing with the grief has affected my school work, relationships and overall willingness to continue my second major,” Domst said.
He concluded his speech by referring to the lack of administrative care to help students who are having mental health crises due to these program cuts.
“What little they have done has made myself and others feel worthless to this campus,” he said.
The meeting then moved forward with questions and concerns that students and faculty have for the administration.
“If you are truly taking our feedback into consideration, why [has] nothing changed in those 13 programs?” SFF Co-President Abigail Tartaro asked.
Evans asked, “Can they talk about what they think will happen to the remaining programs, such as the animation-illustration program, once all of its sibling programs are cut?”
One student brought up, “If we do matter … why have they chosen to ignore what we have said?’
There were also questions about what is going to happen to all the spaces these programs are using. Marz Quinteros-Chavez, a student at Fredonia, asked, “What’s going to happen to all those spaces? Is it going to sit there like Erie Hall or the Hendrix complex?”
Evans also brought up the fact that Rockefeller Arts Center recently underwent a $43.3 million renovation, and wants to know how the renovation was a financially beneficial decision if these programs have been examined in the context of being cut for a long time. He backed this up by saying, “If the answer to this is [that] the renovation will still be used and the classes will still be used and filled, then why are we cutting these programs?”
There were additional inquiries into the new master programs being added, with students questioning how the administration knows they will succeed. Several concerns involved the potential of data no longer being easily accessible to students and faculty.
Fredonia used to make a fact book each year about campus operations. Topics covered within the book included how many people are in each major and minor, how many people are in a graduate or undergraduate program, and the total operation cost. These fact books haven’t been made available to students since 2021.
Fact books like this can be a way for students to easily receive and understand information. Taking away this fact book leaves students uninformed and left out.
The meeting then moved on to what students and faculty would like to see from the administration.
SFF Co-President Sophie Myers said that she would like to see, “[the] administration meet us with empathy as students and faculty.”
“I would love to see answers that go beyond deflecting or not sharing information,” Kevin Hahn, the associate director of Residence Life, said.
“I want to see questions answered,” Quinteros-Chavez said.
“I want to see honesty,” Myers said.
The meeting concluded with students’ concerns about campus mental health.
As Domst and other students demonstrated, the program cuts are affecting students’ mental health, so multiple students at the meeting agreed that a peer support group can help students who are struggling.
There was also talk about how the Counseling Center could put the Campus Lodge to use by taking a few students up there to go walk around and use nature as a way to help with any mental health struggles or stress they are feeling.
Henry Domst, who was quoted in this article, is the Design Editor of The Leader.