One Year After Anti-Israel Protests, Emerson College Still Suffering From Drop in Enrollment
Emerson College in Boston is still struggling with a serious drop in enrollment a year after the city campus was gripped with anti-Israel protests. Boston Police eventually had to clear out a public alley that had been taken over by an encampment and enrollment started dropping almost immediately, prompting layoffs.
As a graduate of Emerson, it brings me no joy to write about this but it was a very different school when I was there.
The story linked below begins by talking about Jewish students who have since left Emerson, claiming it had become a hostile environment for them, something that would have been unthinkable years ago. I’m going to jump to the part about enrollment.
WGBH reported:
Emerson saw its enrollment drop 6% this fall, despite undergraduate enrollment being up 5% nationwide. And with an undergraduate student body of only about 4,000, the enrollment drop has hit hard. The college cut its budget by $10 million and laid off staff.While it’s difficult to quantify the extent of this problem nationwide, higher education experts warn the perception of a toxic campus culture can have a long-lasting effect. They say they’ve already seen a shift in where Jewish students are considering attendance…Brian Rosenberg, former president of Macalester College in Minnesota, said the campus “vibes” students pick up when they visit a campus can significantly impact admissions.“Unless you’re a Harvard or a Columbia with enormous enrollment strength, unhappy students can make for fewer students the next year,” he explained. “If you look at a place like Emerson, they’re in a much more vulnerable position.”That’s because Emerson, which has a relatively small endowment, relies on high tuition from a small student body, so it needs to maintain strong appeal for the degrees it offers in programs like journalism that don’t clearly lead to high-income careers.“So, you’re facing headwinds to begin with, and then you layer on top of that this issue with the protests and with the perception of antisemitism — and it doesn’t take a lot to tip the scales 5-10% against you,” Rosenberg said.
In my entire four years at Emerson, I remember one protest. The president at the time wanted to move the school from Boston to a new campus in Lawrence, MA, a move that no one else wanted. There was a student march to oppose the move that lasted an hour or two. That was it, and this was during the presidency of George H.W. Bush.
I remember a lot of fun arguments at parties over theater, art, and philosophy. Deadheads and goth kids coexisted peacefully and while everyone studied hard, a great time was had by all.
Imagine my horror when doing research for this story, I came across this opinion piece in the school paper, The Berkeley Beacon:
I have no syllabus for teaching during a fascist takeover of the countryI returned to campus yesterday to teach my first class since spring break. I rarely go anywhere over spring break, but this year, I decided I wanted to spend as much time away from my notifications and indulge my obsession with birding and bird photography…As I waited in South Station, later that week, I allowed myself a one-hour limited dose of the news of this country’s white supremacist takeover. I came across an article on bathrooms. At first I thought it was another piece of anti-trans legislation, until I looked closer—“Segregated facilities are no longer banned in federal contracts.” Above the headline of this article on the NPR website, the image of a sign, “Waiting Room for Colored Only → BY ORDER POLICE DEPT” stood.I looked at that sign like I looked at the key to the border wall. Where was I? What year was this? 1960? I stepped onto Emerson’s campus after break and everything was as it had been. No one was protesting. There were no emails from college leadership to the faculty giving us guidance about how to teach in these circumstances. I have no syllabus for “teaching during a fascist takeover of the country.”
The NPR article that this person is talking about sounds horrible. I had to look it up. It’s a real article and it is about the Trump administration removing rules about segregation in federal contracts which relates directly to their stance on DEI policies. Buried in the article is this:
To be clear, all businesses — those that have government contracts and those that do not — still need to follow federal and state laws, including the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which makes segregated facilities illegal.
Oh.
Another opinion piece in the school paper titled ‘Emerson College must act now to protect its most vulnerable students’ includes a laundry list of demands for how the school must accommodate students who are “advocating for Palestine.”
Suffice to say, I’m glad I attended Emerson College when I did. If I was a prospective student looking at schools today, I would probably be one of the many who are passing over Emerson.
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