Students at St. Norbert College in De Pere stage a walkout due to recent faculty cuts, March 27, 2024. PC: Fox 11 Online
DE PERE, WI (WTAQ-WLUK) — Area college students are raising their voices in a walkout over recent faculty layoffs.
Earlier this month, St. Norbert College in De Pere announced its second round of faculty layoffs and budget cuts in the past year.
Students organized Wednesday’s walkout in response to the recent firing of 12 junior faculty members. Nine of the 12 were humanities professors.
Sophomore humanities major, Scotlyn Roemhilt, says students are questioning the quality of education they will receive moving forward.
“College and universities across the nation are being impacted by declining enrollment, we understand that. What we disagree with is the solutions that have been taken to address that declining enrollment. We also are firm believers that although it is important to look at the numbers and the changing trends, that it’s important to also focus on the students who are admitted at St. Norbert,” Roemhilt said.
Joseph Webb, Vice President for Student Affairs at St. Norbert College, says despite faculty cuts, the quality of education will remain the same.
“These are difficult decisions that are being made but they’re necessary to preserve the St. Norbert College legacy moving forward. I’m immersed in the higher education industry so I know colleagues from across higher education industry institutions that have been closed down over the past several years and we want to make sure that we’re taking a proactive approach to continue to provide a high quality education to students for decades to come,” he said.
On Tuesday, the college held a two-hour town hall where about 250 students attended.
Webb said it was a chance for students to voice their opinions on the matter.
However, Roemhilt says students wished they were included in the conversation earlier.
“The message that we’re hoping to send is that this is a conversation, that students at St. Norbert deserve to be a part of. It’s been made very clear, I think by administration that this is not a conversation that students should be worrying about, that we should be having in classrooms and we disagree with that. We think this is our institution that we fund with our money and because of that we have a stake in the college and the decision the college makes that impacts the future of our education,” Roemhilt said.
“In terms of the cuts and the decisions, that is a high-level. We consulted with various campus constituent groups who are part of this process, we even worked with third-party consultants in terms of collecting the appropriate institutional data to make data-informed decisions around these cuts so that process was made, the students have been informed to the point of how these potential cuts will impact their education and we’ve taken recommendations from the students in terms of how we can best communicate this to the students but also understand implications to these decisions, how they’re impacting.” Webb explained.
St. Norbert leaders say enrollment has declined 14% over the past 10 years.
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