Dear Friends,

Thanks to everyone’s hard work and generosity, we have seen  lots of good news for Guilford these past few months! This spring’s fundraising success has bought the college another year before it will need to make the kind of massive layoffs it was considering last fall.  

But this past year has revealed just how precarious Guilford’s position is. A number of faculty and staff members, some of whom had served the college for decades, have been laid off or have chosen to take positions elsewhere. Enrollment numbers for next year are also troubling. 

Small private colleges around the country are closing at an alarming rate, and the future of Guilford remains tenuous. Only the wealthiest or the most distinctive schools, which have the strongest support from stakeholders, will survive this massive thinning of liberal arts colleges.

Fortunately, Guilford has a unique asset that can help it weather this difficult time: you.

Visioning Guilford’s Future
In November of 2020, Save Guilford College volunteers asked ourselves: “What does the Guilford that we can all believe in look like, concretely, and how can it be viable in 2021 and beyond?”
 
We knew that the current college community had to be at the center of answering these questions, so we began holding open community meetings on Sunday evenings, even before the Board of Trustees initiated its own Implementation Process to balance the budget for the 2021-2022 year.  In the months since, attendees at our meetings have included parents, faculty, former staff, and even trustees. Each voice makes a valuable contribution to the process, regardless of their background or relationship to the college. 

In January, the BoT began undertaking adjacent work on its Implementation Teams, the reports from which were shared in Interim President Jim Hood’s most recent email to the extended Guilford community. On March 8, we summarized some of our work for the trustees by presenting a slide deck sketching out a positive path forward for the college to two different Implementation Teams.

We hope to continue the collaborative spirit and momentum of the Board’s Implementation Process with our weekly Sunday meetings this summer, which pick up and follow many of the threads that were raised in both SGC’s work and in the Implementation Teams’ discussions. We are tailoring our projects this summer to Jim Hood’s priorities as interim president. You can see the main foci of our work in this “Syllabus” for our summer community meetings.

We see this as the last leg of Save Guilford’s work, which began in the fall of 2020, to marshal grass-roots enthusiasm around a vision of Guilford that is both viable in the 21st century, and true to the college’s mission. And we need your help to see it through!

Please join us if you can on Sundays at 7pm ET to be a part of the process of visioning Guilford’s future.

Zoom info:
https://link.zixcentral.com/u/92fe1be3/fp59OFjJ6xGiwrunO49hPQ?u=https%3A%2F%2Fharvard.zoom.us%2Fj%2F96581338908

Join by telephone:
 +1 301 715 8592

All are welcome at the weekly Zoom meetings of Save Guilford, where we share news about our work and campus developments, and seek ideas and support for different projects. Faculty often join us, and sometimes a trustee even drops in! 

Guilford Stories

Did Guilford make a meaningful difference in your life trajectory? Do you have a Guilford story to share? Please email us at saveguilfordcollege@gmail.com so that we can use your story to spread the word about why Guilford is worth saving -- and attending, and supporting!

This month we want to share a story that articulates part of what’s so special about Guilford from Casey Graziosi ‘19, English major and ECAR minor:

In order to encourage the success of all its pupils, Guilford does not maintain that “the  real world” is some far off concept, to be conquered post-graduation. Rather, it takes pride in  blending theoretical pursuits of knowledge with concrete action and application, both within  our community and in the world at large.

Throughout my time at Guilford, I experienced this union at every turn. But perhaps most significant was my time spent working with Every Campus a Refuge (ECAR).

ECAR was, and is, much more than just a minor to me. Along with my classmates, I  learned about the many hardships facing refugees in the United States, as well as a variety of  other countries. But more than just learning, we acted: I fondly recall tutoring refugees,  preparing their housing, aiding them in their searches for work, and reaching out to colleges  that had been emboldened to further our mission.

Even now, after graduating from Guilford and moving out of Greensboro, ECAR continues to be a driving force in my life. Inspired by Heather Scavone — the director of the Humanitarian Immigration Law Clinic at the time she visited our class — I plan to become a lawyer, in order to fight for asylum seekers’ rights to reside in the United States. Without Guilford’s dedication to instilling its students with passion, practical skills, and an appreciation for community involvement, I would never have unearthed this dream, nor fought to make it a reality.