Emerson College’s Preventable Enrollment Crisis

E merson College, the private liberal-arts college in Boston, has announced that it will be pursuing staff and faculty layoffs after student-enrollment numbers for the upcoming academic year turned out to be “significantly below” expectations. In a public statement announcing the planned cuts, the college attributed the reduced enrollment to “multiple factors, including national enrollment trends away from smaller private institutions, an enrollment deposit delay in response to the new FAFSA rollout, student protests targeting our yield events and campus tours, and negative press and social media generated from the demonstrations and arrests.”

The first two factors the college cited are obviously largely beyond its control. But the Department of Education’s botched handling of this year’s Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) was a problem that all universities had to face, from Ivy League institutions and large state universities to small private colleges such as Emerson. Additionally, while it is true that some small private colleges have had to resort to drastic measures — in a few cases, merging with better-funded institutions or shutting their doors entirely — these have generally been lesser-known schools whose financial resources are far fewer than those of Emerson, which maintains a national reputation and has an endowment of more than a quarter-billion dollars.

It is also true that Emerson was not alone in having to address disruptive anti-Israel “encampment” protests, in which activists — at Emerson and many other campuses around the country — often transgressed the boundaries of First Amendment–protected protest activity by engaging in illegal and prohibited conduct. In response, many institutions, from Harvard and Columbia to the University of Texas at Austin, pursued disciplinary action against students who violated preexisting university rules governing the time, place, and manner of protests — though in a number of cases that response was both late and weak. Other universities chose not to intervene when police arrested activists who engaged in criminal activity and charged them with offenses such as vandalism, burglary, disorderly conduct, and trespassing.

But Emerson College took a different approach. In April, more than 100 people at Emerson’s encampment were arrested, prompting a backlash from anti-Israel student activists, who demanded amnesty. The college leadership took just three days to cave. Jay Bernhardt, Emerson’s president, released a statement announcing that the college had posted bail for arrested students, that the college would not pursue internal disciplinary action against rule-breaking protesters, and that he would ask the Boston district attorney to drop criminal charges pending against arrested students. Bernhardt also took the opportunity to announce the formation of a speech-chilling “campus bias rapid response team,” pledged the college’s fealty to “equity, access, and social justice,” and further acquiesced to protesters’ demands by suggesting that the college’s board of trustees would in the future consider divestment from Israel.

Now, just over a month after assuring anti-Israel encampment activists that they would not be held accountable by either the college or the criminal-justice system for rule-breaking or criminal conduct (or, in many cases, both) in which they engaged, Emerson College laments the negative impact that the protests have had on its efforts to enroll new students. But Emerson’s enrollment crisis, by its own admission, was at least in some way preventable. The school’s leaders cannot blame anyone but themselves for the ill-thought-out and wrong-headed decision to coddle students who violated rules and broke the law, shielding them from accountability for their actions.

Emerson College was not required to, and should not have, allowed a rule-breaking demonstration on its campus to persist for as long as it did without police intervention. It was not required to, and should not have, posted bail for arrested students, intervened in the justice system on their behalf, and granted them amnesty from internal disciplinary consequences. These were the deliberate decisions of a feckless administration desperate to please a disruptive and vocal minority of its students.

Those decisions came at the expense of respect for the rule of law and the fair and equal treatment of students who violate university rules. As Emerson is now discovering, its public image has suffered: It has lost whatever reputation it once had as an institution committed above all else to teaching, learning, and open inquiry.

After all, why would students choose to attend a college that panders to the most extreme and disruptive forces on its campus? Why would admitted students enroll in a college that indulges rampant violations of both its own policies and the law? Intellectually curious students seek to participate in what is the raison d’être of any serious university — truth-seeking and the pursuit of knowledge; refusing to spend four years of their lives at an institution that protects disruptive protests, even when those protests impede the institution’s purpose, mission, and function, simply makes sense. Surely their parents feel the same way.

The low enrollment numbers and the faculty and staff cuts that will result amount to a largely preventable crisis. Blame lies first and foremost with Emerson’s leadership. Perhaps the college’s first layoffs should be of President Bernhardt and those members of his administration whose irresponsible handling of encampment activists fueled this crisis.