SGA holds ad hoc senate meeting about tuition increase

BY LIZ LEWIS ’22

NEWS EDITOR & PUBLISHER

Concerned members of the Mount Holyoke community gathered at the open senate meeting this week seeking clarification on the tuition increase for the 2021-2022 academic year. On Thursday, April 15, the Student Government Association called a special ad hoc senate meeting to address the decision to raise the comprehensive fee. The meeting, a Q&A session with several members of the administration including College President Sonya Stephens, was open to the entire Mount Holyoke community. 

Since early April, a petition to reverse the College’s decision to raise the comprehensive fee to $73,098 has been circulating within the Mount Holyoke community. The petition, which was written by Ailey Rivkin FP ’22 and Gaby Barber ’23, demands that the College lower the comprehensive fee to match that of the 2019-2020 academic year at $67,578. If the administration is unable to comply, the petition requests a detailed statement explaining how the College plans to use the additional funding accumulated as a result of the rise in tuition. 

As part of this mobilization effort, Barber, Rivkin and the SGA executive board arranged an open senate meeting to address the concerns of the student body. The meeting was coordinated and organized by Chair of Senate Jane Kvederas ’22 and moderated by Chair of Halls Phoebe Murtagh ’21. Stephens, Vice President for Finance and Administration Shannon Gurek and Vice President for Enrollment Management Robin Randall served as panelists. A couple dozen students were in attendance, as well as several other members of the administration. 

The meeting functioned largely as a Q&A session. Murtagh presented the panel with questions which had been submitted by students through an open form on Embark prior to the event. The questions concerned the comprehensive fee increase of over $5,000 from the 2019-2020 academic year, including how the administration arrived at that decision, whether or not the student body was consulted or considered in the process and what factors made this decision financially necessary for the College. 

Gurek came prepared with a series of PowerPoint slides about the College budget. The charts she presented detailed the College’s sources of revenue, expenses and endowment. 

“Gurek and … Stephens certainly came to the meeting with all of the pertinent technical information prepared,” SGA President Maya Sopory ’22 said. “I had concerns about how the increase in the comprehensive fee would affect low-income students, international students and students whose financial situation has been significantly impacted by the pandemic, all of which were addressed by Gurek and Stephens. However, despite their specific acknowledgment of the impact on these groups, I still walked away from the meeting feeling confused and worried for my friends and peers.”

According to Gurek, while need-based aid will be adjusted on a case-by-case basis, merit-based scholarships will not be. Gurek encouraged students to reapply for need-based aid if their financial capabilities have changed significantly during the pandemic. Randall noted that, because of the pandemic, the College has not been enforcing the typical financial aid application deadlines, meaning that students should apply as needed. 

Furthermore, the panelists indicated during the meeting that there is significant pressure on Mount Holyoke to remain in competitive standing with other private liberal arts colleges and that this may have played a role in the decision to increase the comprehensive fee. 

“I found their claim that tuition was raised partly because other colleges have done the same to keep MHC in a competitive position particularly problematic since Mount Holyoke prides itself on promoting diversity when this decision will make Mount Holyoke more exclusive and therefore less diverse,” Kvederas said. “Such decisions should not be made on the basis of what other institutions are doing.”

Another issue that came up during the meeting was the $10 million donation the College added to its endowment in January 2021. According to the panelists, gifts to the endowment do not go directly to the operating budget for that year, and much of the endowment will be allocated to COVID-19-related expenses in the coming academic year. 

According to Sopory, this is where a lot of confusion tends to arise. “The endowment doesn’t function like a pot of money that the College or specific members of administration can pull from as they see fit. It is more like a collection of different funds and assets that together have an approximate value,” Sopory clarified after the meeting. “Therefore, while MHC’s endowment technically stands at $789 million, 90 percent of it is restricted, meaning it cannot be used freely.”

Throughout the meeting, panelists were asked to provide transparency about the decision-making process that led them to raise the comprehensive fee. According to the panelists, student input was factored into this process through the Financial Review Group, a small committee created out of necessity in the wake of the COVID-19 shutdown, which includes several students. The FRG has not met since February. 

To Sopory, who attended the meeting both as SGA president and as a concerned student, the administration’s approach to student questions seemed to miss the point. 

“I had hoped that this meeting would function more like a listening session or a dialogue, rather than a tennis match,” Sopory said. “Most of the panelists’ energy was focused on the explanation and defense of the fee increase decision rather than opening up a conversation to discuss a root problem: students feeling like they don’t have a say in the financial process that is a massive determinant of their educational career.”

Kvederas had a similar outlook. “I personally felt that the panelists’ responses to students’ genuine and serious concerns regarding the comprehensive fee increases were very bureaucratic and did not properly address the real human impact of this decision,” Kvederas said.

“Looking at these concerns at the macro level does not provide an accurate picture of how this increase will affect students, especially international students and first-gen low-income students,” Kvederas continued.

“I felt that a lot of things were being talked about in circles,” Rivkin said. “I felt like we were going around a fish bowl,” she said, making a twirling motion with her finger. 

As SGA president, Sopory is no stranger to open meetings such as this one. Thursday’s ad hoc senate meeting was the third of its kind in Sopory’s three years of involvement with the SGA. After three years of watching these meetings come and go, Sopory feels that the administration and the student body are on two different pages when it comes to financial decision-making, and that this “dissonance” comes down to different understandings of the Mount Holyoke experience and how funds should be allocated to preserve and improve it.

“Students view Mount Holyoke as an interconnected community anchored by education, and the sense that at least I get is that [Financial and Administrative Services] treat it solely as a business transaction,” Sopory said. “Don’t get me wrong, I know that this is a business and students are paying money in exchange for goods and services, but that relationship seems to be understood differently by students, [Financial and Administrative Services] and other offices of the College.” 

Thursday’s meeting, to Sopory and others, was another example in a long list of interactions with the College that left them confused and frustrated. “Every year, it seems like the same things happen over and over,” Sopory said. “Students are upset about a financial decision [or] aspect of the College, we come to senate with questions and arguments prepared, we hear the College’s responses, and yet we walk away feeling like nothing has changed.”