View source for Lafayette’s Lament- Part One

Compiled by [[Tony Brooke]] and [[Holly Epstein]] with [[Mary Papadopoulos]]

from [[The Vid]]: [[Volume Two]], [[Volume_Two#Issue_8|Issue 8]], 4/5/91


On April 2nd, 1991, President Rotberg was invited to the Student Government meeting to talk and answer questions about planned changes, including mandatory ”flex-dollars,” and the proposed tuition increase, both of which will be voted upon this weekend by the Board of Trustees.  Several hundred members of the student body were in attendance, as well as several faculty members, the Director of Admissions, Acting V.P. for Finance and Treasurer Paul Zimmerman, Dean of Students Herm Kissiah, and Mr. Bernard Carman, Director of Public Information and Community Relations Office.  We changed our usual format, as well as postponed our creative writing issue, to devote this entire edition to this, the most crucial, pivotal event that we have yet witnessed as students of Lafayette College. 

The staff of The Vid audiotaped the entire three-hour proceedings, as did others in the room.  What follows is a transcript of the meeting.  Transcription is a very laborious process; it was obviously impossible to include every word.  In order to cover this event as thoroughly as possible, we kept as much verbatim discourse as space and time allowed.  The ellipses denote pauses; ellipses within parentheses denote the omission of extraneous wording which only detracted from the points being made by the respective speakers.  Brackets indicate editorial comments and paraphrasing.  When necessary and possible, we included the names of student speakers, who otherwise were just referred to as ‘student’.  The tapes are available, through The Vid staff, to anyone who would like to borrow the unabridged version.  We respectfully request that you read this in its entirety, so as not to inadvertently take anything said out of context.

== The Meeting ==

President Rotberg:    Great turnout.  (...)  When I had a retreat with student leaders in November, or was it October?...  And when I met in the Williams Center and Pardee with a large group of students to discuss issues and acquaint me with student views on campus, what I heard, and I heard it consistently, in those three meetings, and in meetings with the Student Government President, and in meeting with fraternity leaders and so on--what I heard over and over again from your representatives was that Lafayette had been a great place, but it could be improved by having access to more classes of different kinds, that there were some kind of subjects that we didn’t teach, that we should begin to teach, that there were certain subjects which people had started to study here as freshmen, and those studies have vanished because the faculty vanished.  We talked about, many of you talked to me about, being closed out of classes in certain majors and about wanting a richer curriculum.  And then, particularly in the meeting at the Williams Center, I remember we talked about diversity and about how to enrich the appreciation of culture and diversity on this campus.  Those were some of the considerations that went into the development of this year’s budget. It took longer because I was new and because we had to do so much, and I was assured throughout, and I think the faculty members of Academic Council were quite confident that they would have the accustomed student constituency input into the discussions, and I must say that I thought that we would be receiving and participating with students in the appropriate subcommittee of Academic Council and Academic Council, and there was a great deal of that, but in future years I hope that there can be more.  And so that I think this meeting is particularly important--I’m glad Gregg [Betheil ‘92, Student Government President] scheduled it because we do have time to answer questions, discuss issues, deal with some perceptions and some misperceptions, to inform me and to inform the other Deans and the Acting Treasurer who are here, so that we can still refine the budget calculations, make such changes that are necessary.  And that’s why it is important that we be as constructive as possible, because there is still the possibility of doing a great deal in acquainting me with your views, and in turn, my reflecting those views in what we do financially and in every other way.  

There will...there shouldn’t be a surprise that there will be an increase in charges for next year; there have been in this college, and virtually every college for year after year after year.  As you know from being here, costs in a college go up, have gone up traditionally faster than inflation, and there are very strong reasons for that; financial aid has gone up, in colleges like this, five times the cost of tuition increases over the last decade because the Federal Government no longer supports scholarships as it did before the Reagan era.  Book prices have gone up 80% in five years; periodical prices 117% in five years.  So that there are parts of the cost of running an institution like this that go up faster.  But the important point of my budget, and I can’t, as you will appreciate, discuss the specific dollar details until the Trustees approve the budget this weekend, it’s their prerogative and we can’t talk about specific figures, but I want to indicate what the budget will be used for and what any increases in cost will be used for, because they’re significant and we could quickly count up roughly two million dollars in discretionary expenditures, things we don’t have to do, but I think this college really ought to want to do.  Most of all, responding to what the students and to some extent what the alumni said in their retreats in the autumn and in meetings in the autumn, we will be adding twelve faculty positions next year.  Seven of those positions will be completely new.  Five additional ones will be new but they were in a previous budget authorization but were not used.  So that we will be having 12 additional, actually 12 1/2 additional faculty.  That will enable us to teach subjects we haven’t been teaching for several years, we will have greater variety in certain majors, to strengthen some of the smaller departments, to strengthen some of the stronger departments and larger departments, and to do more.  I think that we will have begun a response to your questions about more teachers, more subjects and I think it will lead to smaller classes on average as well, and this is certainly a goal we are working toward.  It also ought to strengthen some of the more popular majors, and make it more possible to for more of you to take courses in those majors.  So I think we will be adding to the curricular strength of the college.  

Secondly, we will be adding 70,000 square feet of space to this college in the Farinon Center alone.  Seventy thousand square feet is a lot of space and we have one--I said discretionary, but it’s hardly discretionary--one cost which is to heat it and light it and we’ll also have to clean it.  So we are adding custodians, we are adding maintenance people on top of custodians and we will be adding in addition to that programming money for the Farinon Center. We will also be adding a new residence hall, as you know, and we will further need to heat and light it.  Even if heating oil prices per barrel fall back to where they were a year ago, we have had exceptionally high prices this year and are budgeting a sizable amount of money specifically for heating and lighting all our buildings. Thirdly, we have decided to increase financial aid at a rate faster than and greater than any increase in tuition that is likely or contemplated in this year or in future years.  Further, in addition to financial aid, we have added a sizable amount of new funds in a very important area, that is the admissions department and the scholarship program, that is the Marquis Scholars particularly will have a major addition to their finances in the next year.  And when I’m talking major addition in each case we’re talking, each of these categories we’re talking several hundreds of thousands and of the ones I mentioned and in the faculty addition those comes to at least a million dollars, so we’re talking large sums of money.  We will also be adding to the library an amount which is equivalent to at least one part of the Marquis Scholarship Fund.  Now, there’s a choice, the library additions are discretionary.   We can spend less money have fewer books and periodicals in the library and fall farther behind.  I don’t think that’s wise.  I think we need to strengthen rather than weaken our library, even as prices for books and periodicals increase.

I think I’ve covered most of the important new additions to the budget. Everything else is fairly standard--that is, it hasn’t changed much from last year.  Those are big increases and as you see about half of the increase is in faculty salaries and benefits.  Another large chunk is in scholarship, new kinds of scholarships, and we’re not even counting the financial aid increase which will be larger than any contemplated increase in tuition. And that, in summary, is why the charges will inevitably increase.  They will increase less steeply than some colleges of our kind. They will increase more steeply than others, in terms of percentages.  But we will remain virtually the least expensive college of our list of competitors.  We will also remain thousands of dollars less expensive than colleges with which you have  applied, to which you applied and others like you have applied.  We will also….We will also be less expensive in total cost than our nearest neighbors…our nearest neighbors/competitors.  I think, therefore, that as we…as our charges increase, the discretionary items, the ones I mentioned, the other ones are really keeping the professors who are here, continue to keep them here, continue to keep financial aid, continue to maintain the existing campus so we really…we really have, I think, a kind of need for additional funds over and above last year which are prudent to raise, painful though they may be, are prudent to raise and I think--and this is a tough judgment--but they will also contribute over the short term, and, I’m certainly persuaded, over the long term to the value of your education which is the important thing.  And not only your education but to the future education of those who come after you because…I think I should mention…there are two other of many aspects I should say.  One is that those of you who do not receive any scholarship money of any kind from the College and pay the full cost, pay 70% of  what it costs to educate a student at Lafayette.  We…our endowment contributes 30%, which is far more than at many of our comparable institutions. We are fortunate that--and the good news is that our endowment will be contributing more than it has in recent years to the money of the College for next year.  We hope to continue to do that without undercutting the endowment for the next century.  I think we can.  So that  each increase in dollars is only 70% of, what the total charges and total running of the College where we put it. 

I think this would be a good place to stop, and begin answering questions,  Mr. President.

(Continued in [[Lafayette’s Lament- Part Two]]…)

from [[The Vid]]: [[Volume Two]], [[Volume_Two#Issue_8|Issue 8]], 4/5/91