Nathaniel Oneill and Simran Mohanty, two students at Kennesaw State, are heading a petition meant to stand against recent actions by administration, like cutting the black studies and philosophy majors, and altering campus resource centers.
According to the pair, the petition is approaching 500 signatures, and is primed to keep growing.
Oneill, who originally started the initiative, said that, after hearing of changes to the resource centers, he felt that “there was something that needed to be done, and someone needed to do something about it.”
The petition grew out of a conversation Oneill’s mother had with the provost’s office, where they requested a formal list of demands from the students.
Oneill, began to reach out to other students, most notably in KSU’s Young Democratic Socialists of America (YDSA), where he and Mohanty began to work together along with a few others. They soon realized that their small group wouldn’t be enough to get the attention of administration. They’d need to expand.
Mohanty outlined the key demands of the petition including:
- Reinstating the black studies and philosophy majors,
- Reversing any changes to resource centers, releasing an official statement pledging support for marginalized students and promising to stand up against political interference in academic life
- Signing onto the American Association of Colleges and University’s national letter opposing the Trump administration’s policies on education
- Joining a mutual academic defense compact, which allows groups of universities to pool their legal and financial resources in defense of common causes
Oneill described the university’s actions as a form of “anticipatory compliance” with the Trump administration’s proposed changes to the Department of Education, as well as the “Dear Colleague” letter that was distributed to American universities earlier in the year.
“We’re trying to get the provost and the president to come out and say that they’re the ones [responsible for these policy changes],” said Oneill, after referencing the fact that the heads of resource centers as well as the Vice President of Student Affairs, Eric Arneson, have been the individuals responsible for answering to student backlash about these decisions, instead of the President Schwaig and Provost Pulinkala.
Oneill emphasized the anticipatory nature of these actions, saying that there were no federal or state guidelines requiring school’s like Kennesaw State to change these programs in order to keep funding. He also highlighted that several federal injunctions have blocked President Trump from these types of funding cuts.
“The only reason [administration] is shutting these programs down now, is fear of future risk,” Oneill said.
Mohanty expressed the view that the administration’s justifications for cutting the black studies and philosophy majors were flimsy. She explained that “low enrollment,” the main reason given for the program’s cuts, was a University System of Georgia (USG) policy, not a federal one.
Even given that, she said the low enrollment standard had been used “very inconsistently.”
She said that the university “violated their own policies and their own processes,” as they didn’t follow the proper channels needed for majors to be cut within USG.
According to Mohanty, real faculty governance, a process that gives weight to input from faculty on decisions like these, and risk assessment were ignored by the administration, and a Curriculum Committee resolution similarly called the university out for this.
“This is all political…there’s no legal power behind what the administration is doing,” Oneill said. “It’s essentially just bullying, and the best way to stop a bully is to stand up and fight back,” he said.
A virtual press conference for the petition will be held on Saturday, May 10.
