By Addison Mason

During this week’s senate meeting, the senate held a town hall meeting with a panel of faculty and administration to address students’ topics of concern.  The three main topics were the building swap of the Gabelli School of Business and the Global Heritage Hall, on campus dining, and budgeting which was followed by a Q&A for each topic. 

The speakers on the panel were Vice President of Student Life Dr. John King, Provost and Senior Vice President of Academic Affairs Dr. Margaret Everett, Associate Vice President of Student Life and the Dean of Students Dr. Derek Zuckerman, General Manager of Bon Appetit and Dining Services program James Gubata, and Vice President of Finance Administration and Chief Financial Officer Dr. Gloria Arcia. 

Dr. Everett kicked off the panel talking about the building swap of Global Heritage Hall and the Gabelli School of Business. 

Dr. Everett calls the swap a part of a “campus master plan.” This has been a multi-year effort to have the best academic facilities possible for all programs. GHH and Gabelli School of Business are two big factors in the overall plan to update all academic facilities for current and future programs. 

 The administration started by evaluating the size of an average business class here at Roger and discovered that most classrooms in GSB are not big enough to accommodate the amount of students in each class. An average business class can range from 20-30 students and the building doesn’t have big enough classrooms to meet that standard. Often, business classes are being held in other buildings for the use of bigger classrooms. They also took into account the size of competing business schools and Gabelli is much smaller than other schools that were compared. Especially considering the fact that there are programs being added to the business school, including Sports Management and Entrepreneurship. It is acknowledged that business education is growing nationwide and this is simply an attempt to keep up with other schools. The size of classrooms in Gabelli are more suited to accommodate classes of the humanities, which have the smallest average class size on campus and could be a better fit in the Gabelli Building. When the administration realized this, the plan fell into place. 

Everett also touched on the idea of replicating certain dedicated rooms like the Sandbox, Graphic Design Lab, and the cafe space of Gabelli. She intends to have those spaces, maybe along with some new ones for other programs accommodated in the Gabelli building. She also touches on the Newsroom and Podcast Studio acknowledging they must be replicated but can’t say for certain if they will leave GHH. Everett also made it clear that one of her major goals is to have a Center for Humanities, she states, “It’s the largest contributor to our general education, and we think it’s really foundational to Roger Williams’ education.” 

Moving into the Q&A, Senator Henry Siravo inquired about how the humanities and business faculty felt about the switch. She admits that reactions are mixed. Some of the humanities faculty teaching in GHH are not happy about it, but she also mentions some enthusiasm from other professors about a new Center for Humanities. The faculty from the business school is excited because they know they need more space for certain programs that are being created within the program. Everett believes a lot of the complaints from humanities is because they don’t see the full picture of what’s coming. 

Dr. Everett also cleared up the rumor that Mario Gabelli bought GHH after a question from Senator Ryan Lukowicz , she said “there’s no selling of the building…the school has been named after him, so he doesn’t need to buy a building.” 

Lukowicz also asks about possible plans for other buildings including the law school, ELS, and the engineering building. Everett says there will be no change to education courses in the basement of the law school. The Center for Humanities will be mostly used for Writing, English, History, and Philosophy. ELS will be used as general classes and the Engineering building will eventually be refurbished for all kinds of labs and renamed. 

Senator Ella Rothberg asks how the new Center for Humanities will invite prospective students into the humanities programs and where specific labs and studios will be moved to. Everett explains prospective plans including the recognition that Gabelli School of Business needs some cosmetic repair as well as more ideas of how to efficiently use the space for the humanities including moving the design lab and Mount Hope Magazine. 

Senator Quinn Dwyer inquired about the possible timeline for these renovations. Dr. Gloria Arcia states that they have to consider two key components, the first one being funding and the second being what students are currently accustomed to with the budget they have. 

Even before the building swap, they have other priorities like the engineering building. Arcia’s prediction is that the renovations to Gabelli will be done in about 2-3 years considering they can only renovate the buildings in the summer, but they also have to see how the money is distributed to know how fast they can get them done. Everett then passes a question to Dr. John King on the possibility of new designs for buildings being heavily influenced by architecture, engineering, and construction management students when they get to that stage of renovation. Arcia talked of plans to move classrooms near windows to make the building brighter. The administration has had conversations with architects who have worked with older buildings and know how to renovate them in new and innovative ways. 

The next topic discussed was the current state of dining on campus including the reopening of Hawk’s Nest, the hours of the cafe in GHH, and the moving of the “Just Baked” vending machine from the Library to the College of Arts and Sciences. James Gubata also announced that the hard ice cream station will be making a return to Upper Commons within the next few weeks. Gubata also touches on the big success of the Create Your Own station and the demonstration they’ve held to teach students new recipes. Gubata is also working on putting more ingredients in the Make Your Own station so students have more options for recipes to make on a day to day basis.

The reopening of the Hawk’s Nest is something a lot of students have been looking for. A plan was worked out allowing it to be open from 1-5 PM, Monday through Friday. These hours were decided after it was discovered that was when the smoothie sales were at their peak in previous years. They also want to expand the menu to include ice cream based drinks as well as smoothies. Hawk’s Nest has also been used as a concession stand at sporting events and it has been found to be a great success and Cubata has the intention of continuing this in the future. 

In addition to reopening Hawk’s Nest, a “Just Baked” vending machine was moved from the Library to CAS. At the moment, the prices of the vending machine are being reevaluated to be made less expensive and the idea of new items are being explored. 

The final topic discussed was the current state of Roger Williams’ finances and budget. Dr. Gloria Arcia talked about the decrease in student enrollment, she stated, “Generationally there’s less and less students.” This has caused a deficit in the budget. Since there is less enrollment over the last 10 years, the university doesn’t have as much money as it once did. The university has had to make some hard decisions in laying some employees off  in order to get the budget back on track. There were two waves of faculty cuts, the first one being in December of 2024 and the second in late August and into early September of 2025. A total of 50 positions were cut. Senator Ryan Lukowicz questioned whether or not it was discussed to cut positions at higher levels. Arcia responded, “When we look at reduction of force, everyone was on the table, every position.” She also added that when this was being discussed, the cabinet elected to not take an increase in salary. 

Another area in which there were cuts was Discretionary Spending, which is the money spent on a day to day basis. When looking at the analysis, the administration realized the university was spending 21 million dollars in Discretionary funding. They were able to find areas of repetition to decrease this area of spending. 

Arcia explains that they looked at every category of the budget and questioned whether or not each one was essential. While this led to hard decisions, Arcia says the deficit is manageable, she states, “We are not closing our doors, we’re adulting…we’re learning how to budget and how to spend our dollars.” 

The university got permission from the board to borrow 2.275 million dollars from the endowment to help cover the deficit of 11 million dollars from last year. Arcia says they have “committed to repay back that 2.2 this year.” The current university deficit is at 3.3 million dollars.