A group of St. Norbert College students under the name Green Knight Protest for Transparency will be hosting a walkout on Wednesday, March 27, at 11:30 a.m. The protest has been driven by recent layoffs and a lack of communication with the student body.
Organized by a group of nearly twenty students in all school years and a variety of disciplines, organizations and backgrounds, this protest comes as a result of many discussions beginning at the start of the semester. Although the students have requested to remain anonymous at the moment, a spokesperson shared that they are united by a “common goal to demand increased transparency and student involvement from the college administration.”
A spokesperson for the group reflected that during the past school year many students have been anxious over the idea that “some of their greatest teachers and other well regarded faculty members could be dismissed.” They stated, “these fears were confirmed on the day of the layoffs.” For the Green Knight Protest for Transparency members, layoffs and emergency faculty meetings drove the idea of a protest “from an option to a necessity” to “voice [their] displeasure with the actions of college administration.”
In their complete statement to St. Norbert Times, the spokesperson shared the group’s full mission of the protest. “We hope that current and future SNC students will have a louder voice and greater input in future decisions regarding the direction of their college, leaving them more secure in their decision to attend. We hope that students and faculty alike will know where their college is headed and will not enter the community at SNC with the impression that their career paths will be respected only to discover just a few years later that they had been misled. We hope that by showing administration that we care about our faculty and our future we will force decisionmakers to show more humanity in decisions regarding the budget without ignoring the various benefits faculty members bring to students and the college as a whole that are not captured by the numbers. These benefits have and always will be best known by students.”
The Green Knights Protest for Transparency will take place outside of Main Hall Wednesday, March 27, at 11:30 a.m. All students are welcome to attend.
St. Norbert Times reached out to President Laurie Joyner and did not receive any comment. This article will be updated with any response received.