Seton Hall’s decision to restructure the University was made without student voices and as such resulted in an anti-student policy that diminishes the experience of the students who pay for the university to exist in the first place. Specifically, the proposed merger of the College of Communication and the Arts and the College of Education and Human Services is an affront to the students of those colleges. When Seton Hall announced the merge, everyone was taken off guard by design. Prior to the announcement, nobody outside the exclusive circle of those privileged to make the decision were allowed access to the information. The overwhelming majority of people who will be impacted by the merge were never given a voice in planning the restructuring. Even after going public, Seton Hall’s blatant disregard for transparency stains the process. The administration proposed a Student Town Hall, where students could ask questions and they would better explain the impact of the merger to the student body. However, the alleged town hall is not a dialogue--it’s a one way street where the administration controls all of the discussion. Students submitted questions before the event through a university-made portal empowering administrators to determine which questions get asked. Who gets to speak, what gets asked, and how students get to ask it are all determined by the university. Unlike a real town hall, the administration can use this to dodge difficult questions and ignore valid concern from its student body. And in a final blow to meaningful input from its students, each college will vote on the proposal within weeks after the town hall--a vote which is also an illusion of representation. Votes by the colleges are not final or binding; instead, the administration has said they will simply take the votes into consideration, code for “we will be going ahead with our vision regardless.”

Merging the colleges will substantially harm the educational experience of the students involved. There is little to no overlap between the curriculum of CommArts and Education, and there is definitively no overlap between the desired career outcomes of the students. Those looking to teach deserve a college dedicated solely to the development of their educational potential. Post-graduation, education alumni will want to prove to employers that they are masters of their craft with a degree from a college program that specializes in education. Communication students deserve to learn their disciplines in a space designed to accommodate them. When searching for careers, communication professionals need to prove they developed a specific, nuanced skill set. The merger is an insult to both career paths. To force an educator to graduate with half of a comm degree, and a communication professional to graduate with an education degree is ridiculous and will devastate career outcomes for these graduates. 

Student voices have been disenfranchised from the beginning of the process, so it is no surprise the restructuring will come at the expense of the students who pay tens of thousands of dollars to come here. It is painfully clear Seton Hall has no interest in actually looking out for it’s students with this proposal. Despite preaching the ideals of a Catholic university, Seton Hall’s decision to merge Education and CommArts is not rooted in servant leadership, stewardship, or educational development. It’s motivated by profit, designed to serve only the margins of an allegedly not-for-profit institution. The complete lack of transparency is even more revealing; if the plan was at all intended to benefit students or faculty, there would be no fear in giving students a voice in the proposal--or at the absolute bare minimum informing them of the potential restructuring instead of surprising the vast majority of the Seton Hall community with a poorly explained plan just weeks before it is to be voted on.It is on the Board of Regents, the Committee on Restructuring, the Provost, President Nyre, and all of Seton Hall’s administration to do better and stop the merge, or at least allow all stakeholders--particularly, students--to have a say in what happens to the schools they pay for.