I am not currently on a 12-step program of any kind, but recently I felt the need to seek forgiveness for a transgression committed 50 years ago. This summer is the 50th anniversary of the release of Jaws, the movie that redefined the definition of blockbuster and made a whole generation think twice before stepping into the ocean for a quick dip.
I took my little sister to see Jaws that summer, having already seen it. As big brothers do, I waited until the exact moment when the shark leaps out of the water while Roy Scheider is casually ladling chum into the ocean behind the boat and either grabbed or pinched her. All to make the movie-watching experience more realistic, of course.
A recent article in The Washington Post explored why, despite three sequels, Jaws never became a money-making franchise in the way that Star Wars or the Marvel movies have. The obvious reason is that Steven Spielberg elected not to be involved after the original movie. Thus, while I find myself humming John Williams’s simple but ominous theme music every time I read the latest news, the only thing I remember from any of the other three movies is the tagline for Jaws 2: “Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water.”
I thought about that tagline from a college admission perspective last week when I learned that Cornell College (the one in Iowa, not the Ivy) has launched what is either an innovative financial aid initiative or a gimmick.
As detailed by severalotherpublications, Cornell College emailed 16,000 soon-to-be high school seniors in its inquiry pool. Nothing unusual about that. What was different about this email was that it included a link to a personalized estimated financial aid package. Sending out financial aid offers/estimates to students who haven’t applied for financial aid or admission is the new twist in what Cornell calls its “Save Your Seat” initiative.
If you are wondering how Cornell was able to send an estimated aid package to students who haven’t completed a FAFSA, the college started by mining ZIP code data for its inquiry pool. The nine-digit ZIP+4 code in student addresses provides precise information about where they live and allows Cornell to guesstimate a family’s economic circumstances. It might therefore be more accurate to say that the estimated financial aid package is individualized rather than personalized, because there is an element of geographic or ZIP code profiling taking place. The ZIP+4 information is supplemented by aggregated data provided by College Raptor, the consulting firm engaged by Cornell, along with historical internal data on financial aid packages.
There are some kinks to work out and questions to be considered, of course. How will Cornell factor in Pell Grants and other governmental financial aid? Will the college make up the difference if the student’s Student Aid Index turns out to be higher than Cornell’s estimate? Apparently Cornell did some testing using applicants from last year and found that the estimates were reliable in the vast majority of cases.
The Save Your Seat financial aid package for every student includes a $33,000 National Academic Scholarship covering nearly half of Cornell’s list price. To guarantee access to the aid, Cornell is asking students to apply by the end of this month and submit an enrollment deposit by Sept. 1. As The Chronicle of Higher Education explains, “students who apply by the end of July and submit a deposit by September 1 are guaranteed to receive the $33,000 scholarship, plus any institutional need-based grants for which they might qualify, based on their estimate. They will also get first dibs on housing and first-year seminars. (Those who deposit by November 8 will get the same deal, minus the guaranteed need-based grants and priority registration for the seminars.)”
So what should we make of Save Your Seat? Is Cornell College on to something, or is this another marketing gimmick intended to differentiate Cornell from the mass of small liberal arts colleges? (Its one-course-at-a-time curriculum already distinguishes it.)
I applaud Cornell for trying to introduce some transparency about cost up front. We know that affordability is both a major concern and a major impediment for many families in considering colleges, and particularly private colleges. Having a way to estimate cost early in the college search rather than at the very end is potentially a huge step forward for college admission. Cornell’s initiative might be thought of as an updated version of the net price calculator, with someone else doing the calculations for you. Save Your Seat might also be seen as the next iteration in the direct admission movement.
But let us stop for a moment to acknowledge that Cornell’s new initiative, while more transparent, isn’t truly transparent. It does nothing to illuminate the high-cost, high-discount model that higher education relies on.
There are good reasons for that. There have been several colleges that have tried to lead a movement to reset tuition, substantially reducing their sticker price but also substantially reducing discounts. They learned two things. The first was that they were willing to lead, but other colleges were not willing to follow.
The bigger issue is that they learned that families are more than happy to pay lower tuition but are not happy to lose their “merit” scholarships. As it turns out, merit scholarships are among the least transparent and most misunderstood contrivances in college admission—perhaps deliberately so.
Just last week, I spoke with someone who was surprised that a nephew had been admitted to college and then shocked when he received a merit scholarship. That conversation brought to mind a phone call I had with the mother of one of my students years ago. The son was a good kid but not a strong student, and he had just received merit scholarships to two different colleges. I finally figured out that the point of her call was to ask what was wrong with the two colleges that were awarding her son merit scholarships.
The $33,000 National Academic Scholarships offered to every Save Your Seat email recipient might be thought of as the higher education equivalent of Oprah’s “You get a merit scholarship! You get a merit scholarship!” Cornell is far from alone in giving a discount to most or all students, but the potential pickle in which it finds itself is a situation where it tells students they are not admitted after already telling them they have won a merit scholarship.
That is far from the biggest ethical issue raised by the new plan. If the move toward greater financial aid transparency, at least in theory, is a positive step, asking students to apply by the end of July and deposit by September is anything but.
When the National Association for College Admission Counseling was forced to abandon key aspects of its code of ethics as part of a consent decree with the antitrust division of the U.S. Department of Justice, there were fears that college admission might deteriorate into a lawless Wild West, with colleges coming up with new strategies and incentives to coerce vulnerable students into decisions they weren’t ready to make. Thankfully that hasn’t happened to the degree predicted.
Cornell’s decision to tie the Save Your Seat financial offers to an earlier application and enrollment deadline represents another leap forward in the acceleration of the college admission process. Who thinks that’s a good idea for students? It ignores the fact that many high school counseling offices are closed during the summer and won’t be able to send transcripts (perhaps Cornell will use self-reported grades). It is also significantly earlier than the provision in the now-defunct NACAC Statement of Principles of Good Practice prohibiting an application deadline before Oct. 15. Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water.
It’s not clear to me why the earlier deadlines are necessary for the program to work. It’s clear that there are benefits for Cornell, but students should be allowed to choose where to go to college thoughtfully and freely, without coercion or manipulation. Whose seat is being saved here?
Jim Jump recently retired after 33 years as the academic dean and director of college counseling at St. Christopher’s School in Richmond, Va. He previously served as an admissions officer, philosophy instructor and women’s basketball coach at the college level and is a past president of the National Association for College Admission Counseling. He is the 2024 recipient of NACAC’s John B. Muir Excellence in Media Award.
When a white teacher at Decatur High School used the n-word in class in 2022, students walked out and marched in protest. But Reyes Le wanted to do more.
Until he graduated from the Atlanta-area school this year, he co-led its equity team. He organized walking tours devoted to Decatur’s history as a thriving community of freed slaves after the Civil War. Stops included a statue of civil rights leader John Lewis, which replaced a Confederate monument, and a historical marker recognizing the site where Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. was jailed for driving with an out-of-state license.
Reyes Le, a Decatur High graduate, sits at the base of Celebration, a sculpture in the town’s central square that honors the city’s first Black commissioner and mayor. (Linda Jacobson/The 74)
But Le feared his efforts would collapse in the face of the Trump administration’s crackdown on diversity, equity and inclusion. An existing state law against “divisive concepts” meant students already had to get parent permission to go on the tour. Then the district threw out two non-discrimination policies April 15.
“I felt that the work we were doing wouldn’t be approved going into the future,” Le said.
Decatur got snared by the U.S. Department of Education’s threat to pull millions of dollars in federal funding from states and districts that employed DEI policies. In response, several organizations sued the department, calling its guidance vague and in violation of constitutional provisions that favor local control. Within weeks, three federal judges, including one Trump appointee, blocked Education Secretary Linda McMahon from enforcing the directives, and Decatur promptly reinstated its policies.
The reversal offers a glimpse into the courts’ role in thwarting — or at least slowing down — the Trump education juggernaut. States, districts, unions, civil rights groups and parents sued McMahon, and multiple courts agreed the department skirted the law in slashing funding and staff. But some observers say the administration is playing a long game and may view such losses as temporary setbacks.
“The administration’s plan is to push on multiple fronts to test the boundaries of what they can get away with,” said Jeffrey Henig, a professor emeritus of political science and education at Teachers College, Columbia University. “Cut personnel, but if needed, add them back later. What’s gained? Possible intimidation of ‘deep state’ employees and a chance to hire people that will be ‘a better fit.’ ”
A recent example of boundary testing: The administration withheld nearly $7 billion for education the president already approved in March.
But the move is practically lifted from the pages of Project 2025, the right-wing blueprint for Trump’s second term. In that document, Russ Vought, now Trump’s director of the Office of Management and Budget, argues that presidents must “handcuff the bureaucracy” and that the Constitution never intended for the White House to spend everything Congress appropriated.
The administration blames Democrats for playing the courts. White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller accused “radical rogue judges” of getting in the president’s way.
The end result is often administrative chaos, leaving many districts unable to make routine purchases and displaced staff unsure whether to move on with their lives.
While the outcome in the lower courts has been mixed, the Supreme Court — which has looked favorably on much of Trump’s agenda — is expected any day to weigh in on the president’s biggest prize: whether McMahon can permanently cut half the department’s staff.
In that case, 21 Democratic attorneys general and a Massachusetts school district sued to prevent the administration from taking a giant step toward eliminating the department.
“Everything about defunding and dismantling by the administration is in judicial limbo,” said Neal McCluskey, director of the libertarian Cato Institute’s Center for Educational Freedom. As a supporter of eliminating the department, he lamented the slow pace of change. “If the Supreme Court allows mass layoffs, though, I would expect more energy to return to shrinking the department.”
The odds of that increased last week when the court ruled that mass firings at other agencies could remain in effect as the parties argue the case in the lower courts.
While the lawsuits over the Education Department are separate, Johnathan Smith, chief of staff and general counsel at the National Center for Youth Law, said the ruling is “clearly not a good sign.” His case, filed in May, focuses on cuts specifically to the department’s Office for Civil Rights, but the argument is essentially the same: The administration overstepped its authority when it gutted the department without congressional approval.
Solicitor General John Sauer, in his brief to the Supreme Court, said the states had no grounds to sue and called any fears the department couldn’t make do with a smaller staff merely “speculative.”
Education Secretary Linda McMahon defended her cuts to programs and staff before a House education committee June 4. (Sha Hanting/China News Service/VCG via Getty Images)
Even if the Supreme Court rules in McMahon’s favor, its opinion won’t affect previous rulings and other lawsuits in progress against the department.
Here’s where some of those key legal battles stand:
COVID relief funds
McMahon stunned states in late March when she said they would no longer receive more than $2 billion in reimbursements for COVID-related expenses. States would have to make a fresh case for how their costs related to the pandemic, even though the department had already approved extensions for construction projects, summer learning and tutoring.
On June 3, a federal judge in Maryland blocked McMahon from pulling the funds.
Despite the judicial order, not all states have been paid.
The Maryland Department of Education still had more than $400 million to spend. Cherie Duvall-Jones, a spokeswoman, said the agency hasn’t received any reimbursements even though it provided the “necessary documentation and information” federal officials requested.
The cancellation forced Baltimore City schools to dip into a reserve account to avoid disrupting tutoring and summer school programs.
Madison Biedermann, a spokeswoman for the department, declined to comment on why it had yet to pay Maryland or how much the department has distributed to other states since June.
Mass firings
In the administration’s push to wind down the department, McMahon admits she still needs staff to complete what she calls her “final mission.” On May 21, she told a House appropriations subcommittee that she had rehired 74 people. Biedermann wouldn’t say whether that figure has grown, and referred a reporter to the hearing video.
“You hope that you’re just cutting fat,” McMahon testified. “Sometimes you cut a little in the muscle.”
The next day, a federal district court ordered her to also reinstate the more than 1,300 employees she fired in March, about half of the department’s workforce. Updating the court on progress, Chief of Staff Rachel Oglesby said in a July 8 filing that she’s still reviewing survey responses from laid off staffers and figuring out where they would work if they return.
Student protestors participate in the “Hands Off Our Schools” rally in front of the U.S. Department of Education on April 4 in Washington, D.C. (Getty Images)
But some call the department’s efforts to bring back employees lackluster, perhaps because it’s pinning its hopes on a victory before the Supreme Court.
“This is a court that’s been fairly aggressive in overturning lower court decisions,” said Smith, with the National Center for Youth Law.
His group’s lawsuit is one of two challenging cuts to the Office for Civil Rights, which lost nearly 250 staffers and seven regional offices. They argue the cuts have left the department unable to thoroughly investigate complaints. Of the 5,164 civil rights complaints since March, OCR has dismissed 3,625, Oglesby reported.
In a case brought by the Victim Rights Law Center, a Massachusetts-based advocacy organization, a federal district court judge ordered McMahon to reinstate OCR employees.
Even if the case is not reversed on appeal, there’s another potential problem: Not all former staffers are eager to return.
“I have applied for other jobs, but I’d prefer to have certainty about my employment with OCR before making a transition,” said Andy Artz, who was a supervising attorney in OCR’s New York City office until the layoffs. “I feel committed to the mission of the agency and I’d like to be part of maintaining it if reinstated.”
DEI
An aspect of that mission, nurtured under the Biden administration, was to discourage discipline policies that result in higher suspension and expulsion rates for minority students. A 2023 memo warned that discrimination in discipline could have “devastating long-term consequences on students and their future opportunities.”
But according to the department’s Feb. 14 guidance, efforts to reduce those gaps or raise achievement among Black and Hispanic students could fall under its definition of “impermissible” DEI practices. Officials demanded that states sign a form certifying compliance with their interpretation of the law. On April 24, three federal courts ruled that for now, the department can’t pull funding from states that didn’t sign. The department also had to temporarily shut down a website designed to gather public complaints about DEI practices.
The cases, which McMahon has asked the courts to dismiss, will continue through the summer. In court records, the administration’s lawyers say the groups’ arguments are weak and that districts like Decatur simply overreacted. In an example cited in a complaint brought by the NAACP, the Waterloo Community School District in Iowa responded to the federal guidance by pulling out of a statewide “read-In” for Black History Month. About 3,500 first graders were expected to participate in the virtual event featuring Black authors and illustrators.
The department said the move reflected a misunderstanding of the guidance. “Withdrawing all its students from the read-In event appears to have been a drastic overreaction by the school district and disconnected from a plain reading of the … documents,” the department said.
Desegregation
The administration’s DEI crackdown has left many schools confused about how to teach seminal issues of American history such as the Civil Rights era.
It was the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that established “desegregation centers” across the country to help districts implement court-ordered integration.
In 2022, the Biden administration awarded $33 million in grants to what are now called equity assistance centers. But Trump’s department views such work as inseparable from DEI. When it cancelled funding to the centers, it described them as “woke” and “divisive.”
Judge Paul Friedman of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, a Clinton appointee, disagreed. He blocked McMahon from pulling roughly $4 million from the Southern Education Foundation, which houses Equity Assistance Center-South and helped finance Brown v. Board of Education over 70 years ago. His order referenced President Dwight Eisenhower and southern judges who took the ruling seriously.
“They could hardly have imagined that some future presidential administration would hinder efforts by organizations like SEF — based on some misguided understanding of ‘diversity, equity, and inclusion’ — to fulfill Brown’s constitutional promise to students across the country to eradicate the practice of racial segregation.”
He said the center is likely to win its argument that canceling the grant was “arbitrary and capricious.”
Raymond Pierce, Southern Education Foundation president and CEO, said when he applied for the grant to run one of the centers, he emphasized its historical significance.
“My family is from Mississippi, so I remember seeing a ‘colored’ entrance sign on the back of the building as we pulled into my mother’s hometown for the holidays,” Pierce said.
Trump’s Justice Department aims to dismiss many of the remaining 130 desegregation orders across the South. Harmeet Dhillon, assistant attorney general for civil rights, has said the orders force districts to spend money on monitoring and data collection and that it’s time to “let people off the hook” for past discrimination.
But Eshé Collins, director of Equity Assistance Center-South, said the centers are vital because their services are free to districts.
“Some of these cases haven’t had any movement,” she said. “Districts are like ‘Well, we can’t afford to do this work.’ That’s why the equity assistance center is so key.”
Eshé Collins, director of Equity Assistance Center-South and a member of the Atlanta City Council, read to students during a visit to a local school. (Courtesy of Eshé Collins)
Her center, for example, works with the Fayette County schools in Tennessee to recruit more Black teachers and ensure minority students get an equal chance to enroll in advanced classes. The system is still under a desegregation order from 1965, but is on track to meet the terms set by the court next year, Collins said. A week after Friedman issued the injunction in the foundation’s case, Ruth Ryder, the department’s deputy assistant secretary for policy and programs, told Collins she could once again access funds and her work resumed.
Research
As they entered the Department of Education in early February, one of the first moves made by staffers of the Department of Government Efficiency was to terminate nearly $900 million in research contracts awarded through the Institute for Education Sciences. Three lawsuits say the cuts seriously hinder efforts to conduct high-quality research on schools and students.
Kevin Gee from the University of California, Davis, was among those hit. He was in the middle of producing a practice guide for the nation on chronic absenteeism, which continues to exceed pre-pandemic levels in all states. In a recent report, the American Enterprise Institute’s Nat Malkus said the pandemic “took this crisis to unprecedented levels” that “warrant urgent and sustained attention.” Last year’s rate stood at nearly 24% nationally — still well above the 15% before the pandemic.
Gee was eager to fully grasp the impact of the pandemic on K-3 students. Even though young children didn’t experience school closures, many missed out on preschool and have shown delays in social and academic skills.
Westat, the contractor for the project, employed 350 staffers to collect data from more than 860 schools and conduct interviews with children about their experiences. But DOGE halted the data collection midstream — after the department had already invested about $44 million of a $100 million contract.
Kevin Gee, an education researcher at the University of California, Davis, had to stop his research work when the Trump administration cancelled grants. (Courtesy of Kevin Gee)
“The data would’ve helped us understand, for the first time, the educational well-being of our nation’s earliest learners on a nationwide scale in the aftermath of the pandemic,” he said.
The department has no plans to resurrect the project, according to a June court filing. But there are other signs it is walking back some of DOGE’s original cuts. For example, it intends to reissue contracts for regional education labs, which work with districts and states on school improvement.
“It feels like the legal pressure has succeeded, in the sense that the Department of Education is starting up some of this stuff again,” said Cara Jackson, a past president of the Association for Education Finance and Policy, which filed one of the lawsuits. “I think … there’s somebody at the department who is going through the legislation and saying, ‘Oh, we actually do need to do this.’ ”
Mental health grants
Amid the legal machinations, even some Republicans are losing patience with McMahon’s moves to freeze spending Congress already appropriated.
In April, she terminated $1 billion in mental health grants approved as part of a 2022 law that followed the mass school shooting in Uvalde, Texas. The department told grantees, without elaboration, that the funding no longer aligns with the administration’s policy of “prioritizing merit, fairness and excellence in education” and undermines “the students these programs are intended to help.”
The secretary told Oregon Democratic Sen. Jeff Merkley in June that she would “rebid” the grants, but some schools don’t want to wait. Silver Consolidated Schools in New Mexico, which lost $6 million when the grant was discontinued, sued her on June 20th. Sixteen Democrat-led states filed a second suit later that month.
The funds, according to Silver Consolidated’s complaint, allowed it to hire seven mental health professionals and contract with two outside counseling organizations. With the extra resources, the district saw bullying reports decline by 30% and suspensions drop by a third, according to the district’s complaint. Almost 500 students used a mental health app funded by the grant.
A judge has yet to rule in either case, but Republican Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania and other members of a bipartisan task force are holding McMahon to her word that she’ll open a new competition for the funds.
“These funds were never intended to be a theoretical exercise — they were designed to confront an urgent crisis affecting millions of children,” Fitzpatrick said in a statement. “With youth mental health challenges at an all-time high, any disruption or diversion of resources threatens to reverse hard-won progress and leave communities without critical supports.”
Two years ago, Nicolle Orozco Forero walked into an in-home day care in Seattle, Washington, looking for a job. She was barely 22, a whole five feet tall — if that. But she was calm, focused. Her presence struck the owner, Stephanie Wishon, because it’s not easy to find qualified staff who can work with children with disabilities.
Orozco Forero had experience working with kids who had autism back in Colombia, so Wishon had her come in for a trial run and hired her after the first day. The children, who needed someone who had love and care to give in abundance, gravitated toward her. She was good at the hardest stuff. She changed diapers and outfits the moment they were soiled. She was vigilant; her kids stayed pristine. And she got them to do the things they wouldn’t do for other people, like say “ah” when it was time to get their teeth brushed or sit still long enough for her to twist a braid down their back.
Some people just have that way about them.
And people like Orozco Forero are exceptionally rare. Already, the staffing shortage in child care is near crisis levels. It’s far worse for children with disabilities — about a third of those families say they face significant difficulty finding care for their kids, partly because there are too few people with the ability, expertise or desire to work with their children. Immigrant women like Orozco Forero have been helping to fill that void. They now make up 20 percent of all child care workers.
At home, Orozco Forero was also caring for her own young boys, one of whom started to show symptoms of a serious illness over the past two years that doctors have not yet been able to diagnose. She took some time off to care for him last year, before returning to the kids at Wishon’s day care.
Her work has kept an already precarious safety net together. Without women like Orozco Forero, families who have nowhere else to turn for care have to make difficult decisions about how to survive and keep their children safe. Without her, the safety net snaps.
And that’s exactly what happened on June 18, the day she was detained.
It was supposed to be a routine meeting with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Orozco Forero and her husband had been to all their monthly meetings for the past year and change, since their asylum charge was denied in April 2024.
The family — Orozco Forero; her husband, Juan Sebastian Moreno Acosta; and their two sons, Juan David, 7, and Daniel, 5 — fled Colombia two years ago. Moreno Acosta, a street vendor, had been persecuted by gangs who target vendors for money.
After arriving in the United States, they sought the help of a lawyer with their asylum claim, but when they couldn’t pay his full fee ahead of their hearing, he pulled out. They represented themselves in court and lost the case. With no knowledge of the U.S. court system, they didn’t know they had 30 days to appeal the ruling, either. Ever since, ICE has been monitoring them, requiring they wear a wrist tracker and meet with an immigration officer once a month, sometimes more, according to a family member. (The 19th is not naming the family member to protect their identity.) It’s unclear why ICE has allowed them to stay in the country all this time, though it’s not necessarily uncommon; ICE typically prioritized immigrants with felonies for deportation.
Orozco Forero had seen the reports of illegal immigrants being rounded up at their immigration appointments. President Donald Trump’s mass deportation effort has led to the detention of about 30,000 migrants with no criminal record, like Orozco Forero, who now make up about half of those detained. Her husband does have a misdemeanor reckless driving conviction for driving under the influence of alcohol on his record, but he completed a court-mandated alcohol course for that and has no other convictions.
Still, Orozco Forero wasn’t worried when she headed to her appointment on the morning of June 18. If ICE planned to detain her, Orozco Forero thought, they would have asked her to come with the boys, right?
And she had been doing everything right: She’d gone to all her appointments, taken documentation to show she was going to school at Green River Community College taking courses in English and early childhood education. She had completed a child care internship that trained her to open her own licensed in-home day care. Her licensure approval was set to arrive any moment, likely that same week, and the day care was just about ready to go.
But that morning, her family was still wary, asking her to share her location just in case.
Shortly after 10 a.m., Orozco Forero texted her family member: “They are going to deport us”
“Nicolle what happened? Nicolle answer me,” they texted back. “What do I do?”
“I can’t speak I feel like I’m going to faint,” Orozco Forero replied. And then: “I’m sorry it wasn’t what we expected.”
Two-and-a-half hours west, on the coast of Washington in a town called Southbend, Wishon was frantic. Orozco Forero had texted her, too. ICE was asking for the boys.
In two years, Wishon had grown incredibly close to Orozco Forero, who had cared for her own kids. After her family moved to the coast, Wishon rented out her house in Seattle to Orozco Forero, whose boys were excited to have a home with a yard.
Wishon’s husband, Gabriel, hopped into his truck and headed to Seattle. Wishon, meanwhile, got on the phone with the Orozco Forero family’s ICE agent and every lawyer she could. They were going to take them into detention at a facility 2,200 miles away in Texas, a facility that was reopened earlier this year by the Trump administration to detain families. Wishon wanted to find a lawyer who could stop the deportation order, and she wanted to make sure the boys would be reunited with their parents if they took them to meet the ICE agent.
Nicolle Orozco Forero’s sons play with a child their mother takes care of. (Stephanie Wishon)
And that was especially important, not just because they were young children, but because Juan David is still sick.
For the past year, he’s been seeking treatment at Seattle Children’s Hospital for an illness that is turning his urine muddy. So far, doctors have determined he’s losing red blood cells and protein through his urine, indicating a possible kidney issue, but they haven’t yet zeroed in on what is causing the problem. They likely need a kidney biopsy to be sure.
“Given the complexity of his case, it is essential that Juan remain in the United States for continued testing and treatment,” his nephrologist Jordan Symons wrote in a March letter to ICE. “We kindly request that you consider this medical necessity in your review of his immigration status and grant him the ability to stay in the United States until his treatment and evaluation are completed.”
Juan David’s care team has been monitoring him closely to ensure his red blood cell and protein levels never drop too low. His condition could become serious quickly.
“You can die from that,” said Sarah Kasnick, a physician’s assistant who is familiar with his case. Kasnick is also a foster parent, and Orozco Forero provided care for her family.
When Gabriel Wishon arrived to pick up the boys, they were confused and disoriented. Where were their parents? Why was everyone crying? They didn’t want to go to Colombia, they told him on the drive. They wanted to stay in the United States.
Around 5:30 p.m. that evening, he met with the ICE agent, who had waited past her work hours for them to arrive.
“Bye boys, you are going to see your parents right now. They are right inside,” Wishon told them. He watched them walk in carrying two stuffed animals, a Super Mario doll and Chase, the popular cartoon dog dressed as a police officer.
The families Orozco Forero cares for are now in a free fall.
Jessica Cocson, whose son has been in Orozco Forero’s care for more than a year, described her in a character letter to ICE as a “blessing to us in ways I struggle to fully express.”
Orozco Forero and her husband “support working families, provide quality childcare, and demonstrate compassion and commitment every day,” Cocson wrote. “It is heartbreaking to think that someone who gives so much and asks so little could be forced to leave.”
Tamia Riley, whose two sons with autism were also in Orozco Forero’s care, said losing her was like watching “a father walking out the door.”
“These people, these day care providers, sitters, they are a form of family members for me and my children,” Riley said.
Now, the day care she was set to open lays empty. Inside, the walls are plastered with posters listing colors and sight words. There are cushioned mats on the floor and play stations. Tables with tiny chairs. A tall pink dollhouse. High chairs and a pack and play for the babies. Outside, two play houses, a ball pit, toys to ride on and little picnic tables set across an artificial turf. But no children to enjoy any of it.
Big Dreams Day Care she was going to call it, for the dreams she wanted the kids in her care to strive for, and the ones that were finally coming to fruition for her.
Orozco Forero’s detention has rattled child care workers across the country. In Texas, workers represented by the Service Employees International Union have been rallying in her name. U.S. Rep. Joaquin Castro, a Texas Democrat, spoke in support of the family’s release at a rally on June 29 in San Antonio. And a group of union workers is attempting to deliver supplies to the family. It’s an effort Orozco Forero knows little about; she only has limited communication with those on the outside.
Tricia Schroeder, the president of the Seattle-based SEIU chapter that represents care workers, said that, for years unions like hers have been working to improve quality, access and affordability in child care, a system in such deep crisis it’s been called by the Treasury Department “a textbook example of a broken market.”
Immigrant women like Orozco Forero were part of that effort to improve access, doing jobs few Americans want to take on.
“Detaining child care providers, especially those who care for kids with special needs, just deepens the crisis in early learning,” Schroeder said.
Nicolle Orozco Forero was going to community college for early childhood education and planned to open her own daycare before she was detained by ICE. (Stephanie Wishon)
Orozco Forero was also the connective tissue that kept families employed. Her loss has rippled across industries.
Kasnick, the foster parent, said one of the children in her care had been tentatively set to start at Orozco Forero’s day care as soon as it opened. Orozco Forero had been the only provider who would take the child, who has autism and is nonverbal.
Orozco Forero had cared for the girl at Wishon’s day care as if she was her own, even taking her in once when the child’s care had fallen through and no foster family in the entire county would take her in because of the complexity of her needs. The girl arrived at Orozco Forero’s house at midnight on a weekend “with no clothing, toys, medication or any of her belongings … this did not [deter] Nicolle and Sebastian instead they immediately went and purchased all the things” the child needed, a social worker wrote in a letter to ICE. Kasnick said Orozco Forero was even considering becoming a foster parent.
Without her, Kasnick is out of options: She quit her job as a physician’s assistant to care for the child after Orozco Forero was detained.
“There are now 44 patients a day who don’t have anyone to provide their health care, and I can’t go to work because Nicolle’s day care didn’t open,” Kasnick said.
In the weeks since, Kasnick has had an overwhelming feeling of helplessness, she said. How could this happen to someone who gave back so much?
“The security of knowing that you can be in your home one day and in a prison the next week, and you didn’t do anything except exist?” she said. “It makes you feel like there’s no good left in the world.”
Orozco Forero’s family has now been in ICE detention for nearly a month awaiting a bond hearing that could buy them time in the United States. Orozco Forero and the boys are together; her husband is in the same facility but separated from them.
Juan David hasn’t been eating. It took three weeks for him to receive medical care, Orozco Forero told her attorney, James Costo.
Costo has been working to get the details of why ICE allowed the family to stay in the country with monitoring after they lost their asylum case last year. There has been an order for their deportation since then, but ICE never attempted to deport them until the Trump administration ramped up efforts. The number of immigrants without criminal convictions who have been detained has doubled since May.
The process to fight an asylum claim and appeal a denial is complicated — there are court deadlines, documents that need to be submitted and translated.
“They think maybe they can do it themselves and go in and say what happened but they are not understanding the whole legal process,” Costo said. “The system isn’t made for things to be easy.”
Costo is hopeful a judge will allow them to stay in the country temporarily as Juan David seeks care. They have almost no family left in Colombia, and no way to obtain care for him there, their family said. If they can stay, then perhaps Orozco Forero could try to obtain a work visa as a domestic worker.
He has gathered letters of support from numerous people whose lives the Orozco Forero family touched, and Wishon set up a GoFundMe to cover her legal expenses.
In the letters, Juan David’s first grade teachers call him an exceptional student who went from one of the lowest reading levels in the class — 10 words a minute — to one of the highest at 70 words a minute.
“He shows the qualities of a model citizen at a young age — dependable, ethical, and hard-working,” wrote his teacher, Carla Trujillo.
They were all on their way to shaping a better future, Wishon wrote in hers. The couple “worked tirelessly to build a better life for their children and to open their own licensed child care business. In all my years of employing and mentoring caregivers, I have rarely met a couple as responsible, driven, and capable as Nicolle and Sebastian.”
“This family is not a threat,” she concluded. “They are an asset.”
OKLAHOMA CITY — Those who knew Melissa Evon the best “laughed really hard” at the thought of her teaching family and consumer sciences, formerly known as home economics.
By her own admission, the Elgin High School teacher is not the best cook. Her first attempt to sew ended with a broken sewing machine and her mother declaring, “You can buy your clothes from now on.”
Still, Evon’s work in family and consumer sciences won her the 2025 Oklahoma Teacher of the Year award on Friday. Yes, her students practice cooking and sewing, but they also learn how to open a bank account, file taxes, apply for scholarships, register to vote and change a tire — lessons she said “get kids ready to be adults.”
“Even though most of my career was (teaching) history, government and geography, the opportunity to teach those real life skills has just been a phenomenal experience,” Evon told Oklahoma Voice.
After graduating from Mustang High School and Southwestern Oklahoma State University, Evon started her teaching career in 1992 at Elgin Public Schools just north of Lawton. She’s now entering her 27th year in education, a career that included stints in other states while her husband served in the Air Force and a break after her son was born.
No matter the state, the grade level or the subject, “I’m convinced I teach the world’s greatest kids,” she said.
Her family later returned to Oklahoma where Evon said she received a great education in public schools and was confident her son would, too.
Over the course of her career, before and after leaving the state, she won Elgin Teacher of the Year three times, district Superintendent Nathaniel Meraz said.
So, Meraz said he was “ecstatic” but not shocked that Evon won the award at the state level.
“There would be nobody better than her,” Meraz said. “They may be as good as her. They may be up there with her. But she is in that company of the top teachers.”
Oklahoma Teacher of the Year Melissa Evon has won her district’s top teacher award three times. (Photo provided by the Oklahoma State Department of Education)
Like all winners of Oklahoma Teacher of the Year, Evon will spend a year out of the classroom to travel the state as an ambassador of the teaching profession. She said her focus will be encouraging teachers to stay in education at a time when Oklahoma struggles to keep experienced educators in the classroom.
Evon herself at times questioned whether to continue teaching, she said. In those moments, she drew upon mantras that are now the core of her Teacher of the Year platform: “See the light” by looking for the good in every day and “be the light for your kids.”
She also told herself to “get out of the boat,” another way of saying “take a leap of faith.”
Two years ago, she realized she needed a change if she were to stay in education. She wanted to return to the high-school level after years of teaching seventh-grade social studies.
The only opening at the high school, though, was family and consumer sciences. Accepting the job was a “get out of the boat and take a leap of faith moment,” she said.
“I think teachers have to be willing to do that when we get stuck,” Evon said. “Get out of the boat. Sometimes that’s changing your curriculum. Sometimes it might be more like what I did, changing what you teach. Maybe it’s changing grade levels, changing subjects, changing something you’ve always done, tweaking that idea.”
Since then, she’s taught classes focused on interpersonal communication, parenting, financial literacy and career opportunities. She said her students are preparing to become adults, lead families and grow into productive citizens.
And, sure, they learn cooking and sewing along the way.
“I’m getting to teach those things, and I know that what I do matters,” Evon said. “They come back and tell me that.”
Oklahoma Voice is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Oklahoma Voice maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Janelle Stecklein for questions: [email protected].
Plans for a new accreditor, announced by Florida governor Ron DeSantis in June, are becoming a reality.
The Florida Board of Governors voted Friday afternoon to create a controversial new accrediting agency, in coordination with five other state university systems. The decision came after about an hour of heated discussion between board members and the State University System of Florida’s chancellor regarding details of the plan.
Chancellor Raymond Rodriguez argued that the new accreditor, called the Commission for Public Higher Education, would eliminate the bureaucracy that comes with existing accrediting agencies and focus specifically on the needs of public universities.
“The Commission for Public Higher Education will offer an accreditation model that prioritizes academic excellence and student success while removing ideological bias and unnecessary financial burdens,” he said. “Through the CPHE, public colleges and universities across the country will have access to an accreditation process that is focused on quality, rooted in accountability and committed to continuous improvement.”
But before voting in favor of the motion, board members repeatedly pushed back, arguing that the plans for starting an accreditor from scratch were half-baked. They raised a litany of questions about how the CPHE would work in practice.
Some wanted to hash out the details of the would-be accreditor’s governance structure before voting. According to the CPHE business plan, the Florida governing board would incorporate the accreditor as a nonprofit in Florida and serve as its initial sole member, using a $4 million appropriation from the Florida Legislature for start-up costs. (Other systems are expected to put in similar amounts.) A board of directors, appointed by all the university systems, would be responsible for accrediting decisions and policies.
But multiple BOG members worried that the roles of the governing board and board of directors were not clearly delineated.
“With us as the sole member, it appears, or could appear, to stakeholders that the accreditor lacks independence from the institution being accredited,” said board member Kimberly Dunn.
Alan Levine, vice chair of the Board of Governors, called for a clear “proverbial corporate veil” between the two in corporate documents.
“Our role is not to govern or direct the activities of this body,” Levine said of CPHE. “It has to be independent or it won’t even be approvable by the Department of Education.”
Board member Ken Jones pressed for greater detail on the governing board’s “fiduciary or governance obligation to this new entity.”
“I’m in support of this … I really believe this is the right path,” he said. “I just want to be sure that we all go in, eyes wide-open, understanding what is our responsibility as a BOG? … We’re breaking new ground here, and we’re doing it for the right reasons. But I want to be sure that when the questions come—and I’m sure they certainly will—that we’ve got the right answers.”
Members asked questions about the accreditor’s future cybersecurity and IT infrastructure, as well as its associated costs. Some asked whether accreditors have direct access to universities’ data systems and raised concerns about potential hacking and the board’s liability; they were given reassurance that colleges themselves report their data. Some board members also asked for budget projections of what CPHE would cost.
“I have an internal, unofficial estimation around the funds and revenues, but nothing I’d be prepared and comfortable to put forward publicly,” said Rachel Kamoutsas, the system’s chief of staff and corporate secretary, who fielded questions about the initiative.
The answers didn’t seem to fully satisfy the governing board.
“I do think the chancellor and team have a lot of work to do to continue to educate this board, to be blunt,” said BOG chair Brian Lamb, “because a lot of the questions that we’re asking—forecast, IT, infrastructure, staffing—every last one of those are appropriate.”
He emphasized to other board members, however, that voting in favor of the motion would jump-start the process of incorporating the new accreditor and provide seed money for it. But, he added, “not a penny is going anywhere until we have an agreed-upon document on how this money will be spent.”
Accreditation expert Paul Gaston III, an emeritus trustees professor at Kent State University, raised similar questions in an interview with Inside Higher Ed.
“The credibility of accreditation really is directly related to whether the public can accept it is an authoritative source of objective evaluation that is in the public interest,” he said. “And the question that I would ask as a member of the public is, how will an accreditor that is created by and that is answerable to the institutions being evaluated achieve that credibility?”
Despite all the pushback, the BOG ultimately voted unanimously to approve the measure. Now CPHE can file for incorporation, establish its Board of Directors and set out on the multiyear process of securing recognition from the Department of Education.
Oh gosh, I love my job. I think what I really enjoy is the expanse, the scope, the landscape, it’s huge. I love that we are not just solving problems, we are actually defining them.
Best work trip/Worst work trip?
The best work trip? I have had so many good ones. This (APAIE 2025, Delhi, and overall India tour) has been a great work trip.
But I also had a fantastic trip to London with my foundation president. We went together and ran a workshop on “friend-raising”, instead of just fundraising, the idea is to build genuine relationships. UK universities were trying to learn it, and since US universities are a bit ahead in that area, we worked with them. That was really fun.
I also went to South Korea on a work trip. I love South Koreans, and I love the country, but they made me work so hard. The person who planned the trip, god bless her, packed the schedule so tight that I did not get even one hour of sightseeing.
It was a 14–15 hour flight to Seoul, and the trip ended up being the kind of hard work that South Koreans put in every single day.
If you could learn a language instantly, which would you pick and why?
Definitely Mandarin and Spanish. I was foolish enough to promise a class at the University of Puerto Rico that, “next time I visit, I promise I will give you the lecture in Spanish”, so it ain’t happening. But I do take pride in speaking multiple languages, I would say I am fluent in at least five. I even started learning Mandarin with Rosetta Stone (language learning software). I didn’t get too far, but I absolutely love how the language sounds.
What makes you get up in the morning?
I think what drives me is a genuine passion for the work. There’s just so much to be done.
As the chief academic officer at Rutgers, my role is about having a deep, self-aware understanding of the institution, in ways that few others might. While everyone else is focused on their specific responsibilities, I am constantly looking at the institution as a whole.
How do we stay true to our mission? How do we improve? How do we gain recognition? And how do we move the needle on our academic standing?
These are broad, complex challenges, but that’s what makes the work so meaningful.
Champion/cheerleader which we should all follow and why?
There are so many influential people now, and they each teach you something different. I have learned a lot from Kailash Satyarthi, Nobel Peace Prize winner, especially his approach to life.
For instance, I was really impressed by Jennifer Doudna after reading her biography, The Code Breaker, which is written by Walter Isaacson.
I am actually very intrigued by Isaacson himself, someone who writes about others so insightfully. He’s also written about Steve Jobs. The way he pieces together these stories is fascinating.
In The Code Breaker, what struck me was how science and research are portrayed as incredibly competitive fields. And yet, the breakthroughs often come in these magical, nonlinear moments, when the right people come together with the right tools, and suddenly, something clicks.
That idea of serendipity, of miraculous intersections, it really resonated with me. No one creates miracles alone; you need a village.
The book also shows how intensely competitive some of these research groups can be.
But more than anything, what stood out was the brilliance, the hard work, and the value of good observers, people who can see the bigger picture. I think we need more of those champions.
Best international ed conference and why
I think this is a very cool conference (APAIE 2025). I was walking around the booths, and was at a roundtable with several presidents and vice-chancellors. It’s really exciting because this is not what higher education looked like 20 or 30 years ago.
What you see here today is different countries like Canada, Hong Kong, Malaysia, the UK coming together. It’s like the whole world is showing up and saying, “Come be a part of us”.
Worst conference food/beverage experience
I was at a meeting at the World Biomaterials Congress, I think it was in Chengdu, China.
We went out to eat, and let’s just say where we ate you’re pretty much eating reasonably raw food. That was pretty challenging.
I mean I love Chinese food, I love Sichuan food, but that was challenging.
Book or podcast recommendation for others in the sector?
Definitely The Code Breaker by Isaacson, I would recommend that to people. I think it’s a pretty interesting book. If you are looking for something educationally oriented, then there’s Building Research Universities in India by Pankaj Jalote.
I’m very impressed with how he’s drawn on the research in terms of how things have changed over the last hundred years, how India’s research landscape has changed.
I am listening to a whole bunch of podcasts. Dementia Matters, a podcast about Alzheimer’s disease and other causes of dementia, is something I am really liking.
Common Sense Media has released its first AI Toolkit for School Districts, which gives districts of all sizes a structured, action-oriented guide for implementing AI safely, responsibly, and effectively.
Common Sense Media research shows that 7 in 10 teens have used AI. As kids and teens increasingly use the technology for schoolwork, teachers and school district leaders have made it clear that they need practical, easy-to-use tools that support thoughtful AI planning, decision-making, and implementation.
Common Sense Media developed the AI Toolkit, which is available to educators free of charge, in direct response to district needs.
“As more and more kids use AI for everything from math homework to essays, they’re often doing so without clear expectations, safeguards, or support from educators,” said Yvette Renteria, Chief Program Officer of Common Sense Media.
“Our research shows that schools are struggling to keep up with the rise of AI–6 in 10 kids say their schools either lack clear AI rules or are unsure what those rules are. But schools shouldn’t have to navigate the AI paradigm shift on their own. Our AI Toolkit for School Districts will make sure every district has the guidance it needs to implement AI in a way that works best for its schools.”
The toolkit emphasizes practical tools, including templates, implementation guides, and customizable resources to support districts at various stages of AI exploration and adoption. These resources are designed to be flexible to ensure that each district can develop AI strategies that align with their unique missions, visions, and priorities.
In addition, the toolkit stresses the importance of a community-driven approach, recognizing that AI exploration and decision-making require input from all of the stakeholders in a school community.
By encouraging districts to give teachers, students, parents, and more a seat at the table, Common Sense Media’s new resources ensure that schools’ AI plans meet the needs of families and educators alike.
eSchool Media staff cover education technology in all its aspects–from legislation and litigation, to best practices, to lessons learned and new products. First published in March of 1998 as a monthly print and digital newspaper, eSchool Media provides the news and information necessary to help K-20 decision-makers successfully use technology and innovation to transform schools and colleges and achieve their educational goals.
The researchers aimed to show demographic changes across the entire “admissions pipeline.”
skynesher/E+/Getty Images
In the wake of the Supreme Court’s 2023 decision to ban affirmative action in college admissions, no one knew exactly what the impact on Black and Hispanic enrollment might be going forward. In fall 2024, the numbers varied substantially by institution; Inside Higher Ed’s analysis of 31 institutions’ enrollment data showed massive drops in Black and Hispanic enrollment at some institutions and less drastic decreases—and even slight increases—at others.
But enrollment data only tells part of the story. A new report from the Urban Institute, which uses data from 18 colleges and universities, highlights how the demographics of college applicants—and admits—shifted after the court’s decision in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. While the share of applicants who were Black or Hispanic increased from fall 2023 to fall 2024—by 0.47 and 0.65 percentage points, respectively—the portion who were admitted decreased.
It marked the first time since at least 2018 that the share of admitted students who were Black had declined; Hispanic students hadn’t seen a drop since 2021, when the share of applicants also declined. White students’ share of applicants, admitted students and enrolled students has shrunk every year since 2018, a trend consistent with the declining number of white high school graduates (and of white Americans in general). White graduates are also the only group that consistently make up a larger percentage of admitted students than applicants.
Jason Cohn, a higher education and workforce research associate for the Urban Institute and one of the report’s authors, said that these numbers shed more light on the impacts of affirmative action than enrollment figures alone.
“We’ve seen a lot of enrollment numbers in news articles here and there since last fall. In some cases, they stay the same; in some cases, they change. But I think what these data are showing is that that’s not fully reflective of what might actually be happening,” he said. “One of the big takeaways for me is just how much can be hidden if you only look at the enrollment numbers and aren’t seeing what’s happening in the rest of the admissions pipeline.”
For this study, the researchers partnered with two organizations, the Association of Undergraduate Education at Research Universities and the University of Southern California’s Center for Enrollment Research, Policy and Practice, to solicit data from a diverse group of 18 research universities (which they did not name). Although the sample is small, they said, it’s consistent with similar research conducted by the College Board, whose sample included about 60 institutions, indicating that the data is likely reflective of broader trends.
It’s difficult to say definitively that the Supreme Court’s decision caused the decline in the share of admitted students from underrepresented backgrounds. That same class of high school seniors faced other barriers, including the lingering effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and delays and errors with the Free Application for Federal Student Aid. Bryan J. Cook, another author of the report and the Urban Institute’s director of higher education policy, noted that colleges in some states had begun rolling back diversity, equity and inclusion efforts at that time, including some programs aimed at recruiting students of color.
“In this particular analysis, we’re not looking to isolate causation, but I think as we continue to look at this type of thing in future years, I think that’ll help us get a little closer,” Cohn said.
But Robert Massa, a veteran enrollment professional, said he believes the shifts were likely caused in large part by the end of affirmative action.
“I’m not at all surprised that Black students have increased their representation in the applicant pool and decreased their representation in the accepted pool, because universities are taking careful steps to make sure they don’t use race in and of itself as criteria in the admissions process,” he said.
(Edward Blum, the president of SFFA, the anti–affirmative action nonprofit that was the plaintiff in the Supreme Court case, told Inside Higher Ed in an email that the organization has no opinion on the study.)
The researchers plan to dig deeper into the data, analyzing other demographic information, including gender and family income, as well as academic variables such as the standardized test scores and grade point averages of the applicants and admitted students at these institutions.
One possible hiccup for future research: The report also showed that post-SFFA, the share of applicants who chose not to identify their race increased, from 3.2 percent in 2023 to 5.1 percent in 2024. If that upward trend continues, Cohn said, it might make it “more difficult, over time, to unpack these trends and see who’s being served by the higher education system.”
The administration at U of All People has suffered long enough with the underperforming School of Social Sciences and Humanities. Its various departments, programs and whatnot have grown arcane to the point where the students themselves no longer understand the difference between, say, philosophy and psychology, save that both begin with the letter p. And since many students no longer engage in reading or writing without the aid of AI, we should stop supporting distinct majors that encourage both. Consequently, we are restructuring the school to reflect the current dictates of academic administration.
Here are some issues we have made up to justify the restructuring:
There has been a recent decrease in enrollment, or at least there ought to have been.
These are perilous times for the humanities, and smushing them together will help.
Merging departments will make the infrastructure more economical, particularly if we do away with pesky department offices and office staff.
Just saying the word “interdisciplinary” makes us feel connected to the 21st century.
SSSH currently includes English, history, philosophy, religion, sociology, anthropology, modern languages, linguistics, political science, psychology, classics and several others that may have escaped our notice. However, we have hired a consultancy firm that can list them all. Already, the consultants have put together a PowerPoint presentation advising what they have inferred we want.
The restructuring will feature programs such as philohistenglish-religiosophy (PHER), anthrosociopsychology (ASP) and perhaps two other smushes with better acronyms. The new, flexible majors may be grouped under the Program for (Somewhat Limited Freedom of) Speech, the Program for Global Awareness of What Trouble We’re In and the Program That Resembles a Grab Bag From a Kids’ Party. Instead of a bunch of quarrelsome department heads and a dean, a triumvirate of armed SSSH administrators will be responsible for keeping the peace.
We have already polled the faculty and students in a metric calculated to prove our point: On a scale of one to 10, please rate how dissatisfied you are with the current setup, with one being “very” and 10 being “extremely.” The 12 respondents answered that they were very dissatisfied. Note that we are perfectly willing to listen to suggestions from the faculty and in fact have invited them all to attend a feedback session to take place yesterday at 3 a.m. in the Student Center Ballroom (bring your own flashlight!). However, we urge the faculty not to think outside the box we have placed them in while also being nimble when it comes to downsizing.
During this process, the SSSH building itself, shabby compared to the shiny new STEM complex, will be restructured, possibly to a multilevel parking garage with spots reserved for U of All People administrators. It has also been suggested that the faculty themselves could use some restructuring, starting with their mouths, which can be sealed through a painless surgical procedure.
Don’t think of it as a loss of autonomy and shared governance. Consider it a gain for this administration!
David Galef is a professor of English and the creative writing program director at Montclair State University.His latest book is the novelWhere I Went Wrong (Regal House, 2025).
