As Illinois approaches the end its fiscal year, the state’s budget still hangs in the balance. The lack of a budget means that MAP funds cannot be released to the 130,000 students across Illinois who are recipients of the grant.
The about 1,600 SXU MAP recipients were permitted to register for the spring 2016 semester without making financial arrangement to cover the lack of funding. However, on March 14, President Christine Wiseman emailed these students advising them to meet with the Office of Financial Aid in order to come up with contingency plans in case MAP funds remain unreleased for the 2015-2016 academic year.
The students were asked to set up a meeting with the Office of Financial Aid by April 1. Some MAP recipients felt blindsided by the email and believe that they were not given enough time to make financial arrangements. MAP Recipient Patricia Clohessy explained why she is unhappy with how SXU dealt with the MAP crisis.
“Personally, I thought it was heartless and unprofessional. We should not have been advised via email for one–this type of situation should have allowed for students to have questions be answered and to have their concerns voiced. Also, promising us this last semester and then taking it back four to five months later did not allow students the proper time to prepare for this. I appreciate the efforts that have been made by those like President Wiseman to speak to our legislators, but giving us the false hope that we would be okay for this semester was a hard blow,” Clohessy said.
According to Wiseman, when the decision was made to allow students to register for the spring semester without making financial arrangements to cover the missing grants, the expectation was that the budget stalemate would end soon and the funds would be released.
Wiseman also stated that the timing of the email asking students to create contingency plans by the end of the year was based on critical factors. Students had to be notified and asked to make contingency plans by the end of the semester because they would be unable to take out loans for the 2015-2016 academic year after May 6, 2016.
However, Wiseman said that students were not notified sooner so they would not be burdened with the need to make plans until it was clear that these plans would be necessary. “You don’t want to go out too soon, because you don’t want to create anxiety among students if the payout is imminent, but you can’t wait too long or you foreclose the best options to the students and this is the horrible situation in which all universities find themselves now who enroll MAP students,” she said.
The final straw that led the administration to call on students to create contingency plans was the vetoing of Senate bill 2043. The bill would have provided $397.1 million to MAP grants, but Governor Bruce Rauner vetoed the bill in February.
According to SXU Executive Director of Financial Aid, Susan Swisher, so far, only about a third of the 1,600 MAP recipients at SXU have had meetings with the Office of Financial Aid. Swisher says that the students who have had their meetings are dealing with the MAP crisis in different ways.
Some students came up with payment plans or tapped into additional loan availability while others chose to wait out the situation. Clohessy said that carrying out the contingency plan that she committed to would be a burden but would not prevent her from completing her education.
“I believe the plans work for some students but are questionable for others. I, for example, can take out more loans because I have small ones now. Even though I am perturbed because I have worked diligently for my scholarships and jobs that allow me to have such little debt, it will not burden me to the point of dropping out,” she said.
However, Clohessy said that not all students are as lucky, and she expressed frustration with the sentiment that students should simply work harder to cover the costs. “Some students are at the end of their rope–they have all the scholarships, loans, and extra money from jobs that they can get. Some individuals come from extremely poor backgrounds and one more loan can put them over the top. The idea of “working harder,” is extremely frustrating when so many Map Grant recipients have a job or two or three, all while attending school and maintaining their scholarships,” she said.
Wiseman and Swisher stressed that the plans that have been made are contingent and can change depending on what happens with MAP funding. A question and answer document that has been made available to students who made an appointment with the Office of Financial Aid explains what would happen if MAP funds are released by the state.
“Loan options must be processed prior to the end of the term, but if MAP funds are released after that time, we will still be able to cancel the loan for students after the end of the term and any payments made to cover MAP would be refunded,” the document says.
However, it is becoming increasingly unlikely that the state will pass a budget in time to distribute MAP funds to colleges and universities. Wiseman called the Illinois budget an unprecedented crisis that could permanently damage higher education in the state.
“It is the worst thing I have ever experienced and I have been in education in three different states and I have never, ever seen a situation like this. Everyone is referring to this, even in Illinois, as unprecedented,” she said. Universities across Illinois are struggling due to the budget crisis.
Chicago State University recently announced that it would send layoff notices to all employees if it does not receive funding from the state. Western Illinois University has also been forced to lay off 110 employees.
Wiseman compared the financial difficulties of universities in Illinois to someone who is not getting paid by their employer. “If your employer doesn’t pay you, you don’t get to go to your creditors or the people that work for you and say sorry my employer hasn’t paid me, I’m not going to be able to pay you,” she said.
Wiseman maintained that blame for the financial difficulties for MAP students at SXU should be directed solely at the state, not at the university. She also asked students to reflect on what they have done to hold the state accountable for its actions.
“That’s the thing about MAP, the default here has been in the state’s obligation to the students, not in Saint Xavier’s obligations to the students, but in the state’s obligation to the student. That is what I would say to our students as well. What have you done to communicate your situation to the governor and to the legislature, to the people who represent you in the districts in which you live, because the state is in default here, not Saint Xavier? Saint Xavier last year paid out an average financial aid grant of $11,000 to students and that was in addition to MAP and Pell,” she said.
Wiseman also wants students to know that university employees across the board are working to cut costs. “Everybody is engaged in this. Our administration is engaged, our staff is engaged, and the faculty union is engaged in working. Everybody is working really hard and I actually think the students need to also say thank you to everybody here who has looked for ways to take less so that we can reduce the impact of all of this on the students and we have not given up fighting,” she said.
Yasmeen Abdellatif
Senior News Editor
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