CHAMPAIGN – Dozens of students at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign met with campus officials Monday to share their concerns about recent reductions in programming at Bruce D. Nesbitt African American Cultural Center.
Administrators say that rising costs have led the cultural center to reduce its hours of operation. And the Circuit Early Arrival Program, which aims to help Black first-year and transfer students transition to campus successfully, has been put on hold since the grant that funded it ran out.
Rumors circulated on social media about the cultural center being potentially defunded, leading students to plan a sit-in on Monday outside the Chancellor’s office. Instead, university officials planned a meeting with students to discuss the budget cuts and their concerns, which halted the sit-in.
According to Chantelle Thompson, assistant vice chancellor for strategic operations for student affairs, the cultural center is not being defunded.
The Circuit Early Arrival Program is “an extremely important program for incoming freshmen as well as transfer students so that they can get acclimated to campus and know the students, the services and support that are available from BNAAC,” Thompson said. “So we’re trying to find funding allocations to ensure that we can continue those.”
U of I junior Taylor Arianna McKinney told IPM News she came from a predominantly white high school, and the Circuit program was the first time she was surrounded by Black peers she could identify with and find a sense of belonging. With the program, she was able to experience mentorship and guidance, as well as being exposed to several registered student organizations where she finds community.
“My primary concern is that this foundation that was laid out for me is not going to be laid out for the previous students that are coming in,” McKinney said. “I can honestly say that without Circuit I would not be where I am today.”
Sirshaun Bush, a U of I senior in communications, said he’s concerned that cutting the Circuit program would increase BNAAC’s reduction in programming.
“We’re scared that this is just the start,” Bush said. “The university operates on efficiency, on numbers, and if we get less freshmen in the door that know BNAACC from the first day they step on this campus, it inevitably decreases the effectiveness of BNAACC, and decreased efficiency means decreased funding.”
Although the Circuit program is being paused this year, Jazmyne Kellogg, director of the Bruce D. Nesbitt African American Cultural Center, said in the future, they would like to revamp the program by creating an experience similar to what past students received.
“We want to welcome new students to campus,” Kellogg said. “We’ll be looking at ways to do that at a scale that is sustainable so that we can be within the budget, we will determine what is possible financially, I’m not sure what it will look like.”
Domonic Cobb, acting associate vice chancellor for student success, inclusion and belonging, explained that the costs of catering for the center’s programs, as well as the minimum wage needed to pay their student staff, have increased beyond their budget.
“What they have done is trying to figure out how to stay within the budget. There are rising costs, and part of the way that they’ve pivoted to do that was, well, we’re going to protect programming. We’re going to protect some of the events that students expect and love,” Cobb told IPM News.
While the meeting was meant to clear up misinformation and misunderstandings about the reduction in programming, many students were left unsatisfied with the speakers’ responses.
“My overall concern about this meeting has been the fact that it was a budget meeting and it seems the people who are in charge of this meeting weren’t prepared with actually having the numbers, the data about the budget,” McKinney said.
Bush criticized the campus officials’ lack of preparedness for the meeting regarding how they had no plans for how the Circuit program would return or answers for students’ questions about the budget. As a result, he felt campus officials didn’t plan to take the students at the meeting seriously.
“We’ve been able to gather the bigger picture that the university does not prioritize or take us seriously as a community, and it shows less through their words and more through their actions,” Bush said.
With the current political climate and Donald Trump’s anti-DEI executive orders, Thompson understands why students might believe cultural centers are at risk of being defunded.
“I think it’s very natural to connect the two, that changes in funding for things like Circuit have something to do with executive orders,” Thompson said. “But they don’t, we haven’t had anything come down from an executive order for student affairs.”
The room at Ikenberry Commons was crowded with U of I students who stood in a long line to ask the speakers questions and discuss their concerns about the budget. The meeting went over an hour long.
“It’s really wonderful to see that they’re coming out because they want to make a difference to their experience here at Illinois,” Thompson said. “We’re excited to do that hand in hand with them, even though this is something that is not an easy thing to talk about because they’re feeling the impact from it.”
University officials said they plan to meet with students again to discuss the cultural center’s budget in detail and further address concerns about the Circuit program’s future.
“This is not something that’s going away,” Bush said. “This is not something that we’re going to be quiet about. And like we said yesterday, it wasn’t a threat, but we have your faces, we have your names, we have the information, so we’re going to hold you accountable.”
IPM education reporter Emily Hays contributed reporting.