At the Board of Trustees meeting that took place on Friday, Oct. 18, administration discussed many immediate crises that Loyola is currently facing, including the $7.5 million deficit from the enrollment shortfall.

At the meeting, the Rev. Kevin Wildes, S.J. recommended that the university offer a voluntary severance package to help offset the deficit. Wildes said the Board of Trustees approved all the recommended options.

Is this news to you?

If you are a student, it very well may be. That is because, while faculty and staff received an emailed letter from Wildes explaining the university’s course of action, students were left in the dark.

Do you care?

Now, that may be the bigger question.

Wildes said that students may stop reading the information if multiple emails are sent out. He said in an email to The Maroon, “I was not planning to send a campus wide email after the meeting. I usually only do that if there was something that I need to communicate with everyone. (I am always cautious about sending too many campus wide emails in case people stop reading them.)”

If he is right, and if you, the students would get bored by the details of the future of our university, then that is a very sad state of affairs.

We hope that the students would be eager to know the details of how the campus leadership is facing the current financial and recruitment challenges. We hope that as the plans are evolving, the students would demand to be part of this conversation.

If you do care, then let your campus representatives know. Reach out to the Student Government Association. Write us a letter letting us know that you care.

And if we are right, and if the students really do want to know what is happening at our university, then we would also hope that Wildes and the administrators would keep us in the loop when the next phase of the budget plan is handed down.

As a student body, we should push for more transparency from the administration in order to make clear decisions for ourselves and for Loyola’s future. These decisions on issues like the enrollment deficit will affect students in different ways.

The youth, the future, the students will ultimately decide Loyola’s trajectory. If current students are not actively and openly receiving information about critical decisions, how can prospective students make the decision to attend Loyola if they don’t receive clear information?