Requiem for a College

“Counseling services will be available afterward.” There is no possible way a meeting can end well when it’s announced with an addendum like that.

Nevertheless, we filed into the auditorium at the appointed hour on February 3 — “we” meaning the students, faculty, and staff of Saint Joseph’s College, in Indiana. Boxes of tissues sat at the end of each row of seats. A priest said a prayer at the podium. He thanked God for bringing us together and for “the continuing of our mission.” The chairman of the college’s Board of Trustees then approached the microphone.

Fear has a distinct smell. It’s there in that split second just before a car crash or an injury involving sharp objects. It settles in like an ominous cloud in those moments after someone says, “Sit down. I need to talk to you.” I smelled it when the chairman opened the paper in his hands with slow, thick movements.

He said that in the best interests of the college’s future, we would be “suspending operations” on our campus. “There will be no students here in the fall,” he said, capping off his statement.

I heard the wind go out of several stomachs. There was then a single, sharp wail from somewhere on my far left. A chorus of sobbing ensued. I couldn’t speak. I could only breathe. Intentional, pained breathing, the kind where you have to force it. It didn’t last long. The wall cracked and I fell onto the shoulder of my brother next to me. We just stood there, saying nothing. We didn’t need to.

Saint Joseph’s College rises up out of farmer’s fields in Rensselaer, Ind., a city with a population of just under 6,000. As you approach town, the iconic twin towers of the college’s chapel are visible from a distance, along with the college water tower and the Jasper County Courthouse. My first memories of life on this Earth are of sitting with my grandmother in front of the fountain and reflecting pond on the campus. My father came to the college in 1968 to teach philosophy. He also directed the college’s crowning achievement, its interdisciplinary Core program for all undergraduates, ingraining a cycle of reading, discussion, thinking, and writing.

I earned my bachelor’s at St. Joe’s and experienced many of the best years of my life there. My brother followed, and even met his wife at the college, marrying her in the aforementioned chapel. While my brother and I went elsewhere for our graduate study, both of us returned here to teach, anticipating a “happily ever after” scenario on the campus.

We returned to a college fraught with financial problems. The construction of new buildings in the mid-1990s and renovations in the 2000s burdened the institution with considerable and growing debt. Compounding matters was an enrollment level that remained either stagnant or falling at just under 1,000 students as recruitment and retention efforts faltered. Through it all, the business model did not seem to change.

The college opened in 1891, founded by a Roman Catholic order known as the Missionaries of the Precious Blood. For many years afterward, the faculty consisted of priests and brothers who drew meager stipends but whose livelihoods were covered. Times changed and it became necessary to hire expert faculty members from outside the church. That meant higher salaries and greater expenditures.

The 21st-century faculty who believed in the college remained here despite stagnant salaries, egregious insurance deductibles, and significant drops in retirement contributions. Many of us hoped those sacrifices would be temporary. By working together, streamlining our academic programs, and mounting a full-court press on fund raising and recruitment, we thought we could evade the fate that seems to plague so many small colleges these days.

The board’s February 3 decision brought a sudden end to our aspirations. The Sword of Damocles fell and so many of us lay scattered in its wake, not having the first clue as to what was next.

“What does that even mean? ‘Temporary suspension?’” a colleague asked.

I could offer no further explanation beyond the trustees’ comments at the meeting. As no further information came from “the deciders,” conspiracy theories flourished in the vacuum. “They’re going to turn the place into a completely online program run out of one building,” said one rumor. “I keep hearing the phrase ‘planned incompetence,’” said another.

Regardless, professors steeled themselves to face the job market. Some scoured listings in higher education while others considered teaching at public and private high schools. “I’m leaving teaching altogether,” said April Toadvine, a colleague in the English department. “Maybe do online content or admin work.”

Our history department is a case study of the spectrum of challenges confronting faculty. At one end are people like Chad Turner. A newcomer to our faculty, in only his second year on the campus, he will receive only a small severance. At the other end are professors like Bill White, a 32-year veteran of the history department. He shook his head when he heard that the trustees thought tenure and years of experience would be advantages for senior professors on the academic job market. According to the faculty handbook, tenured professors are supposed to receive a severance equal to a year’s salary. But just recently, the college notified those professors that if they find another job in the next year, they will only receive the difference (if there is one) between their severance and their new salary. At least that’s where things stand at the moment.

What Chad and Bill have in commmon is that they — along with the rest of the college’s faculty — must look for new teaching positions at one of the worst points in the academic year to do so. And that’s in addition to finishing out the rest of the semester teaching at St. Joe’s. How anyone can teach or learn in this situation is beyond me.

I asked a second-semester freshman — I’ll call her “Ashley” — how she was coping with the news that the college she only recently joined was closing its doors. She said she couldn’t seem to concentrate in class, and that chicken-bacon-ranch sandwiches will never be the same to her. She works part-time at Subway and was making that sandwich for a customer when her phone buzzed with an email announcing the college’s demise.

“I had a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach,” Ashley said, recalling that moment. “I broke down. My future seemed secure and they took my security.”

She’s uncertain where she will continue her degree as her college education was predicated on scholarships she received from Saint Joseph’s. “The only comfort is the number of colleges stepping up to help us transfer,” she said. “The employees of St. Joe’s and the people of Rensselaer don’t have that.”

The shock wave of the college’s closing is yet to be felt by the local community. St. Joe’s is the third-largest employer in Jasper County, Indiana. Steve Wood, Rensselaer’s mayor, reports that the college is a major utility customer for the city, spending $640,000 in the last year. There is a string of stores, businesses, and restaurants like Ashley’s Subway that line the street up to and across from the campus. While their existence does not necessarily depend on the college, a dip in their customer base seems certain.

Everyone is wondering about the town’s future, knowing that many of the nearly 200 employees who were laid off will need to relocate in order to find work. Is this just the beginning? Will Rensselaer eventually become a ghost town?

I know our college was never going to be shielded from the realities of the world. Whole lives and communities have been torn asunder by the closings of steel mills, factories, corporate offices, and other industries, and there is no reason to think academe should have enjoyed any special immunity from such things.

Hearing about colleges closing elsewhere is one thing. But it’s quite different when it actually happens to you.

For me, this is not only the immediate, existential crisis of a loss of income and a suddenly uncertain future. It is the loss of a community, of an identity, and of an investment from my entire family that goes back nearly 50 years.

The seniors of the graduating class of 2017 are the first “orphans” of Saint Joseph’s College. There will be no campus homecoming for them this fall. They know that as they are asked that most common of questions posed not only to new graduates but now to all of our students: “What’s next for you?”

I find myself sitting once again in front of the waters of the reflecting pond, asking myself the same thing.

Jonathan Nichols is an assistant professor and a writing support specialist at Saint Joseph’s College — at least for a few more months. He is writing a book about the college’s closure.