ABIGAIL JACOBSON
News Editor
After last spring’s removal of 13 majors, some students had remained hopeful that SUNY Fredonia administrators would choose to keep the remaining programs.
As of Feb. 25, this notion has proven to be just that: false hope.
In the fall semester of 2023, it was announced that 13 majors were proposed to be cut.
These majors were:
- Bachelor of Arts (BA) Visual Arts New Media: Art History
- BA French
- BA French Adolescence Education
- Bachelor of Science (BS) Industrial Management
- BS Mathematics: Middle Childhood Specialist (grades five through nine)
- BA Philosophy
- BA Sociology
- BA Spanish
- BA Spanish: Adolescence Education
- Bachelor of Fine Arts (BFA) Visual Arts and New Media: Ceramics
- BFA Visual Arts and New Media: Photography
- BFA Visual Arts and New Media: Sculpture
- Bachelor of Science in Education (BSED) Early Childhood Education (birth through second grade)
The reasoning behind these proposed cuts was due to the announcement of a new budget for the SUNY system by the SUNY Board of Trustees. Out of the $163 million in additional funding received by SUNY, Fredonia was given $2.8 million.
An email was sent out by the Provost’s Office on March 18, 2024, titled “[Students] Program Deactivation Review Process, an Update.” In this email, David Starrett, the executive vice president and provost, said, “We will keep associated minors [to these deactivated majors].”
This was a lie, according to the information in the email students received on Feb. 25 from the Provost Office titled “[Students] Minors,” which detailed what minors were being removed.
The list of the potential minors that were being considered to cut last fall were:
- African American Studies
- Art History
- Arts Administration
- Athletic Coaching
- Film Studies
- French
- Latinx Studies
- MultiEthnic Studies
- Museum Studies
- Native American Studies
- Philosophy
- Public Health
- School & Counseling Psychology
- Spanish
The minors being removed, according to the most recent email, are:
- Computer Information Systems
- Earth Science
- Economics
- French
- Industrial Organizational Psychology
- International Studies
- Mathematics
- Philosophy
- Web Programming
Now, in the spring semester, it has been announced that nine minors have been cut. This list includes minors whose majors were already cut, such as the French and Philosophy minors.
The decision was based on responses given by 30 programs that were “identified as having a three-year average enrollment of less than 12 students.” A deadline was set for Feb. 4 for responses from these programs on how to respond to low student enrollment numbers.
It was proposed that some of the minors in this list be merged with another minor. Additionally, some responses had approaches aimed at increasing the enrollment in these minors.
The Feb. 25 email states that these discontinuations are “not a reflection on the quality of the minor, but our decision is driven by the demand and interest in these minors.”
This email also states that, “This change allows us to focus our resources on expanding programs in higher demand or developing new programs that align better with our student demands.”
Forty-one students are enrolled in these nine minors. According to the email, 19 of those students are seniors and “will graduate this spring.”
The remaining 22 students will be able to complete their minors. According to the most recent email, “students in these minors have been contacted by phone and updated on this development.” This claim was unable to be substantiated through an investigation done by The Leader.
Additionally, Fredonia administrators claim to have “removed the ability for any other students to declare these nine minors.”
In the email, Starrett wrote that, “At SUNY Fredonia, we are committed to student success, and we will ensure that students have the necessary coursework to complete their program, just as we do for every student on our campus.”
The provost’s office ended the email by thanking students, faculty and staff for their understanding “as we move to update our academic portfolio in order to serve the wants and needs of our students most effectively.”
With the announcement of these nine minors being removed, students and campus groups have already begun to express their concerns.
Nat Todero, a freshman medical laboratory science major, mentioned that some of their roommates are art majors and are very vocal about these cuts.
“They’re thinking that it’s … really inconsiderate,” Todero said.
When the email was sent out, Todero took a look at what minors were being cut and they thought, “Those are so important to have.”
Todero has seen a lot of anger being expressed, some at the SUNY system and some at President Kolison.
A student advocacy group, Students For Fredonia (SFF), has also expressed concerns.
Mason Fuller, the president of SFF, claimed, “We weren’t told what the 30 proposed minors [to be cut] were.”
“It is [frustrating] that the promises that were made to us by [the] administration are just being broken without … regard for what we’re feeling,” Fuller said.
Fuller and the rest of SFF had meetings last spring with President Kolison and the rest of the administration.
“The thing that we were pushing for was student inclusion in these decisions,” Fuller said. According to Fuller, “Not all input can be taken into account.” However, “…what [they’re] doing [in comparison with] what they said that they were going to do is really frustrating.”
When the email was sent out, the SFF E-board chat lit up. According to Fuller, they were asking questions such as “What do we do about this?” and “What statements should we make?”
SFF’s plan of action is to inform the students about these latest cuts immediately. “Letting students know what actually is happening and what they are doing … [and the] way that they’re announcing it is something that we also want to call attention to,” Fuller said.
“‘Sunsetting’ minors is nothing … what they’re doing is discontinuing them and removing those avenues for education,” Fuller said.
Fuller wants students and faculty to be aware of these removals, “even if it doesn’t directly affect them.”
Since the announcement of these nine minor cuts, SFF’s first course of action is looking to host a forum meeting. This meeting would allow students to express what they are looking for and what these minor cuts mean to them. Their next course of action is going to the administration.
“It doesn’t feel like they are advocating for us … we understand that [some decisions are inevitable] but it is the fact that they just aren’t consulting us or talking to us [that makes their outcomes worse],” Fuller said.
SFF wants to talk to the student body as a whole and ask questions such as “What are people looking at for the future?” and “What do we as students think that this is going [to] do to our education instead of for our education?”
Fuller mentioned that “[For] a lot of these minors that are being cut … [we] were promised that [they] weren’t going to be touched.” This leaves students in a weird place because, according to Fuller, “If you don’t have the minor and don’t have the major, but those classes are still required, what are we going to do?”
“We are losing classes and we are losing professors, even though … [the administration] said that wasn’t going to happen,” Fuller said.
According to Fuller, “[SFF] have concrete instances of this happening in things that they promised, or at least stated factually, [were] not going to happen.”
Fuller mentions that the only way that they can see the administration being held accountable is if the student body and surrounding community, “Don’t look away from what they’re doing. Don’t let them just get away with taking these avenues of education away from people.”
In Fuller’s words, the administration is “trying to make us complacent … [by saying that they are cutting] only nine [minors] out of 30, [and that] we get to keep the other 21.”
According to Fuller, “[The] administration doesn’t take the students seriously and they might not always take the faculty seriously. But if we’re both saying the same thing, maybe we can get them on the same page.”
Fuller’s biggest concern is whether the administration “actually” spoke to students and saw how this affects them.
“You can think about how it affects the budget all you want and that’s great but education isn’t a business. Education affects students and it should be for the students and about your students — not about your wallet and not about your budget,” Fuller said.
Fuller believes that even if these decisions aren’t affecting you or your major, students need to think about the students who are coming in next year and the year after that.
Dakota Richter, a senior biology major and the president of the Student Association (SA), expressed his thoughts on these minor cuts. When program cuts were first announced, they cut majors. According to Richter, “There was [such a lack] of communication on their end … We were in the dark.”
At the start of the fall semester of 2024, there were rumors being spread on YikYak and through word of mouth of possible minor cuts. Richter expressed being extremely frustrated with the administration “because … we had this issue last year. [They] should have been better prepared.”
After hearing these rumors, Richter called an emergency town hall meeting and expressed his frustrations.
At this meeting, Richter gave three reasons as to how this discrepancy between what was promised and administrators’ actual actions could have occurred. “One, they lied to me. Two, they miscalculated or three, they lied to me,” Richter said. According to Richter, they didn’t answer him until the end of the meeting and said they “miscalculated or misspoke.”
With the recent announcements of nine minors being cut, Richter again heard through social media. Because of this, he became even more frustrated. Richter believes that students have the right to open information, so why didn’t he hear about any of these cuts?
“As the president, I should have been aware to tell the students what is going on and as a student, I should have been able to know about this information as soon as it happened,” Richter said.
Richter called an emergency town hall meeting and a few minutes later, received an email about the meeting on that Friday, Feb. 21. In that meeting, Richter became aware of the minors being cut and wanted to wait to be able to discuss with students at General Assembly (GA).
“I wanted to have some time with Students for Fredonia, to talk with them, to tell [them] what is going on [and] to keep them in the loop before it got pushed out,” Richter said. He was unaware that they were pushing the email out so early.
Richter discussed the original minors that they proposed in the fall and mentioned that many minors involving minority groups were proposed. This made him extremely frustrated.
“You cannot cut minority grounds in a minority area when you have minority students on a campus,” Richter said. Richter has been told by word of mouth that these minors involving minority groups will not be cut due to the current political climate, and he is thankful to that degree.
According to Richter, with the current list, three or four of those minors were self-deactivated by their departments.
Richter discussed that the administration doesn’t see student initiatives in those minors.
In Richter’s own experience, he didn’t find out about the deactivation until they were already voting on deactivating one of his majors. Now, Richter has about 40 credits that he can’t use for anything.
“It hits a little more when this type of stuff occurs because I was directly affected and I have friends that are directly affected so that [is] frustrating to see,” Richter said.
Richter mentioned his Chief of Staff, Isabelle Price, who “is all for protest.”
Richter, however, is more of a facts type of person. “Give me the facts, let’s see the facts and then I’m going to try and help out … policy-wise.”
According to Richter, he takes off his student hat and puts on his SUNY representative hat in situations like these. Once doing that, he’s not just looking at SUNY Fredonia. He’s looking at all 64 campuses to advocate at the statewide level.
“I think it’s incredibly important that our student groups [have] protests … I am doing a lot behind the scenes that I’d be more than open to tell people about,” Richter said.
In the future, he would like to see more of the data aspect and promises being kept. “So if you’re cutting and doing this, show us promise. Show us [the] future. What are you planning? What are your initiatives? Because right now, I don’t see those initiatives,” Richter said. “You’re giving me good ideas on how to get out of the deficit, but where is the future hope [for] after the deficit? I’m not seeing that.”
Richter mentioned that SA is looking to do a mass protest in April “whether it’s minor cuts, women’s rights, equal rights, trans rights, Black rights, affirmative action, all those things.” Richter is currently collaborating with some student groups about a time and palace where they can protest and walk through Fredonia and the town.
The Leader reached out to David Starrett for clarification on the proposed 15 minor cut list and the current nine minor cut list and was told: “There was no list of 15 minors being proposed.”
These 15 minors that were proposed in the fall came from the charge for the Joint Task Force on Academic Minors that was approved by University Senate on Sept. 30. After this was iterated to Starrett in a follow-up email, no response was received.
The Leader also reached out to President Kolison for a time to meet to discuss these minors and was told there was nothing available for this week.
“We came here as … students to pursue an education that fulfills us and people are getting that taken away from them,” Fuller said. “It’s important for us as students to be able to advocate for why we came here and why we like Fredonia and why we choose this school out of 1,000 other schools in the country … Use that to advocate for students in the future because they might not have that same [opportunities].”