By Joshua Geaughan

Bristol, RI, Roger Williams Campus – On November 24th, 2025, the Student Senate had its busiest senate meeting this semester. In addition to the usual suspects of the student senators, 24 worried students crowded in the Mary Tefft White Center to ask John King, Vice President of Student Life, questions about the recently announced furlough program. Set to go into effect over the next semester, Roger Williams University is requiring most staff to go on an unpaid leave for a week of their choice as an attempt to mitigate part of the current 3.5 million dollar deficit the university is in. Staff get a choice between four possible weeks (two in January before spring semester, one over the spring break, and one week after commencement) chosen by the upper administration to avoid conflict with normal classes. Joining the open floor discussion with John King was student Laney Reardon who took her time to share the results of a survey put together to gauge student’s opinions on the furlough program. 

According to King, the current financial deficit only accounts for 1.75% of the current university budget but the concern comes from the Board of Trustees requiring the university to pay back said deficit by the end of the fiscal year which is at the end of June. King explains that this deficit is less than those faced by other universities across Rhode Island with schools like Johnson and Wales seeing deficits of 34 million dollars in addition to massive layoffs. King argues that the reason for these massive deficits is due to lower university enrollment and this dip in enrollment is felt nationally as less high school graduates are enrolling into college. 

According to the National Student Clearinghouse, the preliminary data for Fall 2025 shows total postsecondary enrollment has increased by 2% over last fall.  More importantly for RWU is the enrollment rate (AKA yield) which measures the percentage of applicants who have been accepted and actually enroll in the university. Looking at the 2025 college tuition data from the National Center for Education Statistics, Roger Williams has a below average yield rate for the state of Rhode Island at 14.13%. This means that of the 87.78% of applicants accepted into Roger Williams, only 14% chose to come to Roger; the state average yield rate is 19.44%.  A comparable school in terms of enrollment yield is Johnson and Wales with their rate sitting at 14.27%. 

“But I feel like we’re making many excuses. I don’t care about the industry, I’m a student at Roger Williams. I don’t really care what JWU did. I don’t care what Bryant did. I love this school. That’s why I came here. I run here. I’m on track and cross country. I want to have a team to come back to. I want to have a school to come back to, but I am not confident that this is going to be here in 20 years, when I want to bring my kids here. How are we not going to let this happen again?” questioned Amanda, a senior at RWU. Her concerns resonated with the rest of the room as students seemed to be less concerned as to why the deficit exists in the first place but rather seemed concerned with the way the university went about trying to plug that gap. In addition to asking university staff, many of whom live paycheck to paycheck, to go without a week of pay, there have been ongoing debates there have been ongoing debates regarding the university’s legal authority to breach/break the various labor contracts that they’ve created. 

King explains that the university knew that they were going to suffer a budget deficit this year and had already taken some steps to mitigate the issue by cutting lower administrative positions, closing down some retail cafes across campus, and cutting some facilities positions. When it came to the decision to implement the furlough program the cabinet was still debating into November on the finatical “lever” to pull to save the most money. King explained that the decision to implement the furlough program came about a week before the initial email announcing the program was sent out. 

“The furloughs, the workforce reduction, it hurts. It is not a pleasant experience. But if you look across the higher ed sector, not only there, but also across the finance sector, what Amazon is doing, what’s happening just globally, we’re just in a period of a bit of retrenchment and retention retrenchment economically. I’m not an expert in this at all, but I know from industry to industry, there are workforce reductions and budget stuff happening, and hopefully we’ll get to the other side of this and have some growth.” explains King. Although the furlough program will hit faculty hard the university is also providing a 2.5% wage increase to nonaligned (out of union) faculty members to tide employees over. 

Another criticism buzzing around the senate floor was that the upper administration is making too much money. As questioned by WQRI org rep Chad Eakes, “So the president of the university makes about $563.86 per hour, whereas a custodian who’s just hired will start at $18.18 was there any discussion of perhaps a more equitable solution, so that someone making $18 an hour is not losing out a week’s worth of pay?”

King responded by saying, “That’s a great question, and I appreciate where it’s coming from in terms of sincerity and the care for our employees. I would say that we wanted to distribute this across all parts of the employee base. We did not consider a tiered approach to that, and this was the solution that we came up with.”

According to the 990 nonprofit forms filed by the university for the 2023 fiscal year university, president Ioannis Miaoulis made $1,026,226 over the year and University’s Provost Marget Everette made $333,000. In addition to their flat pay the university also discloses that the president received about $200,000 and the provost received $51,000 in “other” payments. Both individuals received a raise between the 2022 and 2023 fiscal year with the president receiving a $421,884 raise and the provost receiving a $10,177. 

In responding to concerns over the unequal ways that this furlough will affect some staff members over others King explained that a tiered system that addressed these inconsistencies was not suggested but did assure the room that there will be conversations with individual employees and an implementation of the employee assistance program. King also added that the university’s lowest paid employees, the dining staff, are exempt from the furlough program. 

“Dr King met with us, told us this, and to me, it’s like, All right, we’re moving on, right? Because that doesn’t take away from your experience. Me not being here a week doesn’t take away from your experience. Is someone in SPLO and student life still going to answer and be there for you all? Yes. Is that going to happen in other offices around student life? I can only speak to student life because I only work in student life, and I only ever worked in student life,” explained Associate Dean and director of SPLO, Carol Sacchetti, “I think that’s why we want to make sure as we’re not kind of sharing all of this with you. It’s almost to protect you on some of these things. I echo what John said, yes, maybe a communication should have gone out. Yes, maybe this should have happened, but we’re in the present now, and I know for me and the staff I work with, we’ve got to look forward, because we’re not going to talk about what happened three weeks ago, because, you know, we’re already looking forward. How are we bettering your experience and making sure it’s the best we can.” 

A student responded to Carol by saying, “I’m really glad that you are able to move forward, because you helped me so much personally, and so I’m so grateful that this isn’t going to affect you. That makes me really happy. But there are professors that I personally know who will be greatly affected by [the furloughs] who cannot then afford food and are worried. My professors are stressing about these things and they are not going to be able to adequately teach me. You have said that you don’t want this to affect students, but it is going to affect students.” The student highlighted that some professors can’t take the furlough over the January intersection because of their winter classes, additionally some professors have trips or take time to grade over spring break. The student believes that if the faculty aren’t able to do any work, let alone respond to emails, the furlough will affect students.  The student continued saying if faculty members are adamant about their needs not being met and the breach of union contracts they will go on strike which will affect the student’s semester.

Following John King’s open floor time was junior Laney Reardon. Since the first email about the furlough program Reardon has taken her time to put together a survey focused on student opinions on the furlough program. She opened her speech by saying, “Carol, students are concerned about the pay of our staff and faculty because we care about you guys. We’ve been cared about so extensively, and I know we haven’t had the chance to interact as much, but I do know a lot of people who get the opportunity to interact with you, and there is nothing but appreciation for everything that you do. So we want you to know that this is because of that dedication. So I have something prepared. I’m here strictly to talk about student opinion and student life and perspective. The professors, staff and friends that I’ve found at the school have given me endless opportunities and memories that I will never forget. However, when I heard about the furlough being imposed onto the faculty and staff, I cannot help but feel extremely frustrated. As I spent more time at the school, it has come to my attention that there’s a general sense of student dissatisfaction, and that comes from the feeling of not being listened to.”

Reardon’s survey amassed 97 student responses and asked questions about how the student body feels about the current university administration. The first question asked if students feel as though upper university officials care about student feedback, 74.9% of the responses answered no. The second question asked if the upper administration makes good choices on the students behalf, again 71.6% of the respondents put no. Additionally 52.7% of respondents have considered transferring out of the university. In a long answer section of the survey students highlighted how although the faculty at this university are warm, welcoming and very helpful, students feel that the upper administration tends to remain out of touch and tamper with aspects of the university that students really enjoy. 

Following Reardon’s reading of the survey results, John King promised to bring the complaints and criticism heard to the upper administration over the next few weeks. The student senate passed two bills that just added language into the bylaws to match what was already in practice by the student senate. The first bill clarified the process of how a club goes about sending in their budget to the senate and the second bill removes the requirement for a representative from the academic affairs committee to sit in on the allocations committee.