I am going into my fourth year at Beloit College and have experienced my fair share of this institution, and I think we need a course change. On Oct. 2 and 3, the Beloit College Board of Trustees will have one of their three annual meetings. This piece is, in part, for them. However, the main goal of this piece is to stimulate a community-wide conversation at Beloit College…
Shared governance on this campus is a myth. It is very much possible that it existed more meaningfully at some other point in our 180-year history. Today, that shared governance exists in name only, and barely that on the student side. Part of it has to do with a lack of participation. I am not pushing against that, per se; it is hard to argue against some of the most recent Academic Senator election turnout results or the long history of extending BSG elections due to a lack of a quorum. What I am pushing back against is that the college seems to take low participation levels for granted, using them as an excuse when students are not included in nor informed about administrative decisions. After years of curbing student agency, the student body got the message, and we stopped participating. BSG gets ignored by senior leadership, unless it’s convenient for them. Academic Senators are barred from some powerful decision-making committees. When you add the fact that Student Representatives to the Board of Trustees are appointed instead of elected, have no voting power, are told to listen and not speak, and are bound by confidentiality, the hierarchical nature of this college gets communicated loud and clear.
To view this hierarchy even more clearly, you only have to look at some events over the last few months. Attacks on free speech are unprecedented in this country, and instead of being part of the pushback, our administration has chosen to lean in. Last semester, there was one of the longest-lasting on-campus protests, and the first in at least seven years. The college wielded its institutional power to muffle student voices instead of actually addressing the concerns of the student body.
In an initial meeting with members of senior leadership, the college attempted to address issues related to the protest with students. Yet, when BSWU posted recordings of the meeting’s actual happenings on social media, Dean Ron Watson gave me, a member of BSWU Leadership, a deadline to remove the recording before the college would consider disciplinary action; while many assumed the meeting to be public, recording and distributing anything without all parties explicitly consenting is technically a violation of the student handbook. The college also essentially kicked students out of Middle College and started to meaningfully enforce the chalking policy in place (this meant that a lot of messaging was erased, when other non-critical chalking was not as diligently reviewed or critiqued). The most meaningful thing the college did was revive an advisory committee on residential issues. However, as the college would be quick to point out, the committee is just advisory and holds no decision-making power, one of students’ biggest concerns.
Not only has the college failed to meaningfully address the concerns of the student body, but they turned around and barred all “protest and demonstration activity” in academic and administrative buildings, and also barred all chalking around Middle College according to the 2026-2027 Student Handbook. There was no official announcement of these specific significant changes, nor was there any consultation with students about them. This change came on the heels of the college administration pushing through a new club on campus last year in the name of free speech, while again ignoring the will of students. All these decisions around free speech and student input seem to be made out of fear, not to uphold an ethical line.
While the college will claim these changes were necessary to maintain operations, and even the future of the college itself, that excuse is getting old. Students don’t want to keep hearing that the college is struggling financially, and that we all need to make sacrifices, in the same reality where our president made nearly $400,000 in the 2024-2025 fiscal year, and others in senior leadership comfortably made over $200,000. It’s not that I don’t believe we have been in an economic hole — by some metrics, we have been in financial distress since 2018, when faculty had to take a voluntary pay cut to keep the college afloat — but rather, it’s that we are not all shouldering the burden equitably. The staff is taking the majority of the load. There are hourly staff at the college being paid between $15 and $20 an hour, according to the college’s job opportunities page online, with the living wage in the area for any family being over $23. The pay of salaried staff is not much better, with many starting below $40,000 a year. It doesn’t look better for departments; the school claims to be investing in athletics, where the average head coach salary sits below $37,000. Students are taking on the burden. Look at all the student reports around housing conditions — dorm renovations just picking up over the last few years, a building out of commission, and long maintenance backlogs, just to name a few — and restructuring or removal of departments — look at the PART department and the recent cutting of French. Then, there is faculty. Faculty are often expected to take on additional administrative roles according to multiple faculty sources, all while the average starting salary for tenure-track faculty is ~$60,000. Is senior leadership sharing the burden?
I think reasonable people would answer no. Yet, faculty and staff are continuously overworked. Not only that, but the Board of Trustees consistently raises all students’ cost of attendance without clear, timely communication, and without meaningful student input. While there are students on most Board of Trustee committees, they have no voting power, and are expected to keep most information confidential. Since the 2022-2023 school year, the cost of attendance has gone up 16.3%. There was a 3.8% increase for the 2026-2027 school year, after a 3.4% increase for the 2025-2026 year, after a 4% increase for the 2024-2025 year, after a 4% increase for the 2023-2024 year. While it’s great to hear that the college announced a $30,000 tuition cap for incoming students next year, there are still concerns around aid not keeping up with rising costs of attendance — at current rates, a student could be expected to pay $8,000-$10,000 more per year by their fourth year compared to their first. All of this doesn’t even acknowledge the fact that $30,000 is a steep request, and while low-income students pay less than that, most are still expected to pay above $10,000 a year in direct costs before loans in just their first year.
This brings up questions on retention. Beloit College has enrolled a record number of first years, but do they expect to retain them? Last year, the college enrolled 297 first-year students. The same class now sits at 175 students, according to college reporting. That is a 59% retention rate. Now, the class of ’29 is an anomaly. Both the classes of ’28 and ’27 actually increased their enrollment numbers. However, this is again a story of successful marketing and recruitment, not retention. In addition, it is important to note that these numbers include transfer students, which is great for our recruitment, but means our initial cohort retention is still low. The college does release some data on this, though the numbers do not align with the Quick Fact sheet the college also releases (in the case of the class of ’29, the Quick Fact sheet places the total enrollment in fall of 2025 at 297, while the graduation and persistence data places it at 228).
While I am sure there is some reasoning behind the gap of 69 students, other discrepancies in released data for the college don’t give me the most trust in the college’s transparency. On the Facts, Stats, Rankings page on its website, the college claims to have 17 special interest houses, but it can only list 14 (one of which is Haven Hall, which itself includes some of the other special interest houses it counts on the same list). They claim 14% of students are international, but we are currently sitting at less than 11.2%, and haven’t been above 14% since 2023. They claim 36% of students are eligible for a Pell Grant, though the actual distribution rate, according to the US Department of Education scorecard, has not broken 31% in the last seven years. They claim 11% of students are Black, though the college has not reported a percentage above 8% in the last four years.
What Can We Do?
That was a lot of “complaining without doing anything,” as some who end up reading this may say. With that said, I do want to be a bit more explicit in what I think we — starting at the Board of Trustees and going down from there — can do to address these systemic concerns. To put it bluntly: I do not have a simple solution. However, if we are willing to spend the time — I’m talking years here — and make the commitment, there are some things that can happen. For students to be more engaged on campus — which means higher retention rates, better student-led recruitment, and ultimately more committed alumni supporting the school financially — we need agency. That agency comes through the form of meaningful shared governance. While the exact frameworks should be figured out by all stakeholders on campus, I’m not talking about statements, frameworks, or advisory committees here. I am talking about building a culture of respect and consultation between students, staff, faculty, and senior leadership.
For the students reading this, that means understanding the many complex facets of running a college and the reality that, while Beloit College may be an institution, it is made up of human beings deserving of respect. It also means understanding that power — shared governance is meaningful power here — is rarely given, and so we have to show up in all the small and big moments to both create power and take it. For the staff, know that your work is recognized. For the faculty, please keep fighting for student voices to be taken seriously and start utilizing the power you do have; in a time where the sphere of power of the Academic Senate is fading, standing up to further encroachments by administration is as much a necessity for students as it is for you. For the senior leadership team, that means becoming radically transparent and moving with urgency toward shared governance. If substantial changes to our governance system are not made, I’m not sure how much longer our vision of Beloit College will last. We should all trust that each and every person in the Beloit College Community has its best interest at heart, and thus should be a part of deciding its future.
Leave a Reply