Good news! The college has just issued a general welcome to all concerned alumni to campus in conjunction with the Executive Session of the Board meeting tomorrow (Saturday August 11th) and the "Holding Earlham in the Light" event. They will be making four individual alumni trustees available for an hour for conversation during the event. Those of you who may be on the fence about attending, please consider going! This opportunity to speak with members of the Board is precious, and we should make the most of it!

We are excited about this chance to renew the open, shared, deliberative airing of concerns, and yes, disagreements, in the way we all learned at Earlham: not avoiding or shutting down vital differences but instead talking them through, seeking the relevant information needed to resolve them, and keeping the robust inquiry necessary for practical action in a shared governance community alive. Bring your consensus muscles, everyone!

Organizers have generated a summary of the concerns already widely shared with this group and others, also available in hard copy on the ground tomorrow, and we include them below.

In particular, if you end up in individual conversation with one of the trustees and share the concerns about transparency and consensus decision-making already articulated, you might think about asking for the following:

1. An agenda for Saturday's meeting of the Board.
2. Redacted minutes of the June Executive Committee meetings and the full Board meeting mentioned by David Stump in his communication in July, to show the list of members present and actions presented.
3. An update to the Board's website to include a full list of committees, their membership, and the names of their chairs, like that on the Alumni Council page.
4. Restoration to Lilly Library of the full set of Board Books for all years of the Dawson administration and this past year, including June 2018 and, eventually, August 2018.
5. Full details on the college's debt.

"Holding Earlham in the Light" is informed by the following concerns:

We are gathering today to "Hold Earlham in The Light" for the following reasons:

To "hold in the light" is a Quaker concept that conveys two things: (1) a deep concern for someone or some valued thing, like a humanitarian cause or institution, that is in danger and (2) a determination to seek the truth and arrive at a common understanding in order to respond effectively and unitedly in a situation of conflict and crisis.

Earlham is in deep crisis following the abrupt resignation of Alan Price as President and the announcement of a deep financial crisis that will require an $8M cut to the operating budget. We "Hold Earlham in the Light" to express our concern and to seek the truth for the causes of this situation of danger and for the purpose of moving toward a unified response among all constituencies.

We seek truth because there has been a lack of candor on the part of the Board concerning the circumstances of Alan Price's resignation and the sources and magnitude of the financial crisis. We "Hold Earlham in The Light" in the expectation of transparency and accountability on the part of Board to the wider Earlham community.

We "Hold Earlham in The Light" also because fundamental process of Quaker governance and decision making have broken down at the College. This collapse lies at the core of the crisis that Earlham is now in. We seek a process of reflection, admission of mistakes, and reform of by-laws and structures to return the college to a balanced governance structure. Such reform is necessary to restoring trust in Earlham's leadership and to achieving unity among Earlham's diverse constituencies.

Finally, we "Hold Earlham in The Light" as an expression of deep concern for the survival of the College. The proposed $8M cut will result in the termination of academic programs and the firing of tenured teaching faculty. This action will have deeply negative consequences for Earlham's curriculum and its capacity to attract new students to the campus. Earlham's identity and very existence as a unique Quaker college is in question if these drastic cuts occur as planned.