Dear Editor,

However well intentioned, Loyola’s proposed radical changes are ill-timed and badly thought through.

Discontinuing the Education Programs (primary and secondary), large parts of the national recognized Communications Department, and the Evening Degree Program hardly seem geared to Loyola’s new goals of aiding Post-Katrina New Orleans and Loyola’s commitment to social justice.

As strange as it may seem, Loyola, with its 325 million dollar endowment, its newly announced 200 million dollar Development Campaign, its faculty’s eagerness to personally contact alumni it has taught over the last 35+ years to seek financial support, its 92% student return rate this year (when it anticipated 70%), makes it one of New Orleans few institutions without a major financial crisis.

Should Loyola do a complete Program Review? Of course. But on the usual one year timeframe, after this year’s hurricane season. and when we know actual Fall freshmen enrollments.

Announcing major changes now only drives away confused freshmen applicants and current students afraid they won’t be able to complete their majors.

Loyola should immediately announce it is putting proposed changes on hold, and have the ideas put into the pot of possibilities for next year’s Review Process.

Loyola wouldn’t be the only New Orleans institution to rethink and alter proposed changes. Show me an institution, public or private, in New Orleans that hasn’t.

Putting changes on hold, and rethinking them, would be a sign of strength, not weakness. It would make Loyola what it really is: a place that learns and teaches learning.

Vernon GregsonProfessor, Religious Studies