Opinion: Grinnell does have the money to survive. Our administration is just horribly mismanaging it.

“By giving to Grinnell,” promises the Grinnell College alumni website, “you sustain our commitment to fully preparing today’s Grinnellians-in-the-making — regardless of their ability to afford a college education. With your gift today, you honor students, as they overturn assumptions and subvert the obvious. And you make it possible for Grinnellians of today and tomorrow to keep inventing the world — as only Grinnellians can.

Big words from a college that’s reconsidering need-blind admissions. 

 Like most institutions of higher education, Grinnell College relies on the generosity of alumni for much of its funding. From various letters to the editors of The Scarlet & Black, I know that years or even decades after graduation, many alumni still read this paper. For any donors reading this, here is the use to which your hard-earned money is being put. 

This September, the College showed off with an extravagant dedication ceremony for a still unfinished and unoccupied Renfrow Hall, a 67-million-dollar project intended to house 115 students. Meanwhile, an army of overcompensated administrators was busy eating away at the foundations of the Grinnell student experience.  

A short list of examples:  

1. In the 2022-2023 academic year, Student Government Association (SGA)’s rollover budget, which could have been used to fund a diverse array of student-run activities, was given to Weekend, which routinely spends extravagant sums on poorly attended events.

2. This fall, students moved in to find their dormitories devoid of bookshelves. When I emailed Residence Life about this, they informed me that “bookshelves on desks are no longer offered with college furniture.” As an alternative, the email suggested that students who wished to store books could purchase their own means of doing so. 

3. For over 25 years, Grinnell’s annual medallion ceremony, which commemorates the very first dollar pledged by James J. Hill to the school that would become Grinnell College, has been a symbol of the College’s investment in its newest students. This year, administrators ended the ceremony. In lieu of a shining silver dollar, first-years were welcomed to Grinnell with cheap plastic candles.

4. Last spring, administration threatened to discontinue print editions of this very paper, a service on which Grinnellians have relied since 1894 and which costs the College only about $6,000 a year, or roughly 9 percent of a student’s annual tuition.

 To add insult to injury, the College has simultaneously been juicing ever more money out of its students. Even students who neither live nor eat on campus — rare exceptions at this point, given the new meal plan policy — now pay a whopping $67,560 in tuition, but this figure is far from enough for Grinnell.

 Starting next year, rather than being allowed to rent a house or apartment, third-year students will be forced into overpriced college housing. Even off-campus fourth-years are now being charged $1,851 per year for the most minimal meal plan, which many still do not want or even use. The College claims mandatory meal plans are meant to combat food insecurity among lower-income students. This rationale is a dishonest money-grab. The meals Grinnell provides are costlier and of lower quality than cooking for oneself. Worst of all, administration has indicated that the College’s next cost-cutting measure may be to do away with need-blind admissions altogether.  

 Last week, Raffay Piracha suggested that, rather than be reduced to a shell of its former self, the College should spend lavishly — and then shut down. But Grinnell College doesn’t have to walk the path to financial destruction — it’s rolling in money. Grinnell’s students paid it more than $124 million for tuition and room and board costs last year, and its famously high endowment hovers around a steady $3 billion. Why can’t the College afford us? 

 The reason is clear. Instead of supporting its students, the College spent $67 million building Renfrow Hall. Those 67 million dollars could have cut every student’s tuition in half for a year — but the College decided new construction was more important than our finances or its own stability. Now it’s imposing austerity measures on us to make up for its own irresponsibility. The College’s decision becomes even more ridiculous when one remembers that it built Renfrow primarily to provide a justification for forcing students onto its own meal plans and housing — that is, to net itself more money. If Grinnell had really wanted to honor Edith Renfrow Smith, as she well deserves, they would have spent those millions to support her community, not to enrich themselves. 

  I believe Grinnell College is worth preserving. That’s why I’m calling on alumni and current students to reach out to the College and use their power to hold it accountable for financial irresponsibility. Current and future alumni need to stand up and cut off the College that cuts corners on them. Hopefully, when faced with a choice between responsibility and bankruptcy, Grinnell will use its money more wisely and alumni will once again be able to donate knowing that their dollars will provide future generations with the same wonderful opportunities they were given.