09/01/2020
Members of the Canisius Community:
We write to you as a corps of alumni, current and former faculty and staff, and concerned members of the family of Canisius College whose aim is to use our experience, expertise, and love for Canisius to assist the College in navigating its current crisis. We recognize that no single factor brought Canisius to the present crisis. COVID-19 has exposed, rather than caused the College's dire financial situation, as well as the damage done by a decade of missteps, failure to address long-term trends in enrollment and retention, and a slow drift away from the College's historic mission and vision. However, we are choosing, in a spirit of faith, to view the present crisis as an opportunity for renewal.
In the Jesuit tradition, to retreat does not mean to give up ground, but rather to turn within to find the best way forward. In that tradition, we aim to meet this challenge by "retreating forward"—turning within to reconnect with our mission and identity as a college and as a spiritual community. Our aim is to harness the collective power, wisdom, and diverse perspectives of the entire Canisius community, and together we will find the best path forward. There will be difficult decisions in the months ahead, but beyond them await another 150 years of excellence and leadership in the region and in the world.
Several members of the Canisius community who have committed to this mission held an organizational meeting on Monday, August 10, 2020, to discuss how best to help the College navigate the current crisis. The group was comprised of those who had volunteered to help with this initial stage (including two recent faculty members, a current student, a current and a former member of the Board of Regents, recent alumni, and older alumni). This group will continue to function as the Steering Committee on behalf of the broader effort to coordinate communications and assignments while additional working groups are established. To avoid confusion with the Movement to Restore Trust related to the Diocese of Buffalo, with which Canisius President John Hurley and several members of the Canisius Board of Trustees have been involved, and to portray more accurately the long-term goals of our group, we will now refer to the effort simply as Canisius 2070.
The group also reaffirmed its mission of engaging in a respectful and mutually transparent manner with the Canisius College Board of Trustees, senior administration, and faculty to solve the challenges facing this community. Our focus will be on process rather than individuals, and on sustainable positive outcomes rather than retributive short-term responses to the current crisis and its causes.
The Steering Committee agreed to organize future discussions in the following areas:
Organization and Governance
Jesuit Tradition
Curriculum and Instruction
Marketing and Communication
Advancement
Finance and Budget
Facilities
Student Life
Enrollment Management
In the spirit of transparency, all group meetings will require accurate minutes to be shared publicly (without attribution) with best efforts to post within 48 hours.
The Steering Committee will coordinate with volunteers for the working groups to set and communicate dates for initial working group meetings no later than September 10, 2020.
We ask anyone interested in this effort to go to http://canisius2070.org/ and indicate any working groups in which you are interested in participating. Please share this post with your contacts who are concerned for the future of Canisius.
Yours in faith,
Sam Bronsky ‘83
Maragret DelPlato ‘96
Aidan M. Ryan ‘14
Daniel J. Ryan,’82
Jeff Siuda ‘94
Scott L. Sroka ‘94
E. Roger Stephenson, Professor Emeritus, English
