University of Rhode Island’s President Marc Parlange and a panel of faculty hosted a town hall to address issues and concerns around current executive orders that could affect federal funding, student financial aid and diversity, equity and inclusion policies, on Monday.
“Today we know our universities are under strain,” Parlange said. “Years of disinvestment on both state and federal levels, growing public distrust and attacks on academic freedom are testing our institutions.”
The university has put together a Leadership Team on Federal Action that monitors federal orders and legislation coming from the Trump administration, according to Parlange.
Panelists addressed the issue of federal research funding cuts for graduate students and faculty. URI will still accept graduate students, according to Bethany Jenkins, vice president for research and economic development at URI.
Jenkins addressed the recent termination of the United States Agency for International Development funds.
“We had things flying in, decisions that were out of our control that we had to respond to that impacted the lives of people,” Jenkins said. “We’re not going to sugarcoat that, we are handling these individually and on a case by case basis.”
The university is putting a freeze on Fund 110, funds that account for indirect cost revenues, according to Rhody Today, that will be used to account for research funding shortfalls. URI cannot backfill all terminated grants, according to Barbara Wolfe, provost and executive vice president for academic affairs.
“We are engaging our [URI] foundation to look at other means of getting funding,” Wolfe said.
As of now there will be no across the board budget cuts or hiring freezes, according to Abby Benson, vice president of administration and finance.
“We are scenario planning for scenarios that might come our way and focusing on our balanced budget effort,” Benson said. “As a result of that some units may see some shifts in their budget to keep their operations continuing as they have been but we are not planning across the board cuts this time.”
Federal funding and Department of Education financial aid make up over a quarter of the university’s operating budget, according to Benson.
“As we understand it today [student loans and aid] are being moved over to the small business administration,” Jenkins said. “We want to make sure that it will be a seamless transition. We are a public land grant institution that is committed to accessibility and part of that accessibility is making sure that our students have those resources.”
The Free Application for Federal Student Aid forms will continue and have been going along much smoother than last year, according to Ellen Reynolds, vice president of the divisions of student affairs.
Many of the questions submitted to the panel before the town hall concerned the university’s commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion programs, according to Marc Hutchinson, moderator and department chair for political science at URI.
Parlange said there will be no changes to the university’s DEI programs.
“We have our mission, we have our values and we’re sticking to them,” Parlange said. “We are not going to start to make changes to our actions or behavior preemptively.”
This sentiment was echoed by the panelists in concerns about academic freedom on campus. Columbia University is currently reviewing their curriculum on courses involving the Middle East due to federal funding disputes imposed by the Trump administration, according to Emma Tucker at CNN.
“Academic freedom is core to the function of any university,” Wolfe said. “So you can say you heard it from me, faculty should not change syllabi or content preemptively. Keep doing what you’re doing.”
The panel also addressed concerns about immigration status for international students. The day before the town hall a Turkish national doctoral student at Tufts University was detained by the US Department of Homeland Security without explanation, according to AP News. Her student visa was terminated.
“We know that there have been some clearly very unsettling events that have happened in recent weeks,” Wolfe said. “The federal action taskforce has guidance on their website for individuals should you see a federal immigration officer on campus.”
Wolfe encouraged students to reach out to the URI Office of Global Initiatives, which provides office hours and a 24/7 number students outside or within the U.S. can call for immediate assistance.
