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When SUNY ESF’s United University Professions chapter raised alarms over the broader SUNY system’s stability plan in September, it left the campus community and administration in contention.

Since then, ESF students and faculty said they’ve had sharp exchanges with ESF and SUNY administrators, from town halls hosted by the Mighty Oak Student Assembly to closed-door discussions. Even with the administration’s efforts to improve transparency about the stability plan, students and faculty are still unsure of the school’s future.

MOSA President Daniel Vera said many students wish ESF administrators, like ESF President Joanie Mahoney, were more present in activism about the stability plan — joining the campus community’s greater movement against the broader SUNY system.

Instead, he feels like the university has become complacent.

“What originally was a fight against a united front from ESF as an institution toward SUNY has turned a little bit more into a fractured system within our own institution,” Vera said. “Students are feeling a little bit like, ‘Can we trust our administration? Can we not trust them to advocate for us?’”

In a Tuesday statement to The Daily Orange, Mahoney said misconceptions about the plan circulate in campus circles. She emphasized that the stability plan is an “active, living” budget projection.

“There is no plan beyond what has been shared widely and we welcome broad campus input on determining the critical next steps necessary to achieve our revenue and spending targets,” Mahoney wrote.

Put in place by the SUNY system, ESF’s five-year stability plan asks ESF to cut 18.9% of its full-time staff by 2029 while increasing undergraduate enrollment by 16.1%, according to a document obtained by The Daily Orange in September. The plan also requires cuts to ESF’s athletics program and the school’s five major forest properties across the state.

The plan comes as the university has operated at a deficit for the past 13 years, since SUNY took away the school’s $10 million recurring mission funding in 2012.

Since learning about the stability plan, many faculty and students have been taking steps to revise the stability plan and encourage a collaborative relationship when creating university policy.

While Vera said students have had several recent successes — including the development of a Stability Planning Committee made up of student, faculty and staff delegates to help steer the stability plan’s implementation — they haven’t come without tense exchanges.

However, Vera believes the administration is learning more about the campus community through their relentless efforts.

“Right now, our administration is learning that the campus is active, that we want to be part of a participatory process,” Vera said. “We’re not just here to negate everything and be super negative and just crazy. We want real solutions, and we want to work with the administration to do that.”

Mahoney stressed that campus feedback is “welcomed, considered and appreciated.” Complying with requests from MOSA and the graduate student association, ESF has made information about the stability plan available on its website — and has continued to meet with students to hear their concerns.

“So many colleges and universities are in the same position as ESF; seeking to balance revenues and expenses, and we welcome any and all feedback as we work to achieve the goals outlined in our Fiscal Stability Plan,” Mahoney wrote in her statement.

Avery Magee | Assistant Photo Editor

ESF President Joanie Mahoney speaks at Syracuse Mayor Ben Walsh’s Sustainable Syracuse Initiative launch on April 22.

Tense exchanges

In October, students, faculty and staff created ESF For Our Future, an advocacy group dedicated to attracting more investments into ESF and to urge inclusion in stability planning.

The organization’s first event was an Oct. 10 rally on the university’s quad during SUNY’s plenary meeting to deliver letters and testimonials from students, faculty and alumni directly to SUNY Chancellor John King Jr. Upstate Medical University police were present at the event, Vera said.

“It was a really aggressive, very weird way to come to our campus and then alienate our student body,” Vera said.

Vera said King had left the premises before the student delegation could deliver him the package of letters.

ESF UUP chapter president Matt Smith said he put in a request for assembly, which was ultimately approved by the ESF administration.

The following week, Vera said he and other student representatives met with Chief of Staff and Senior Vice Chancellor Ian Rosenblum, Vice Chancellor of Government Relations Will Schwartz and other SUNY administrators to discuss student concerns.

Vera said he was surprised to learn the morning of the meeting that Mahoney and Chief of Staff Matthew Millea would also be attending. He said when he scheduled the meeting, he emailed Mahoney and asked how to be strategic in representing both students and ESF administrators, but didn’t receive a response, a pattern he noticed when trying to communicate with the president.

In her statement to The D.O., Mahoney said she has made several efforts to be transparent with students, providing “detailed briefings” and “critical” next steps to students per their request.

“We know where we need to be from a financial standpoint and now is the time to seek input as we work to collectively achieve these revenue and spending targets,” Mahoney wrote. “This will be an iterative process over the next five years with many opportunities for analysis and input.”

A week after Vera’s meeting with Mahoney, Schwartz and Rosenblum, SUNY administrators scheduled another meeting with four ESF students, not affiliated with ESF student government, Vera said.

Ari Hedges, an ESF student who attended the meeting, said he had done research on the stability plan to ask administrators about how it would affect students. However, when he asked about it, Hedges was told that it “wasn’t what the meeting was about.”

Hedges and other students said SUNY administrators told them they should be “grateful” to attend ESF.

“I came in with the foresight that they probably would not want to hear what I had to say. With zero expectations, somehow they were all let down,” Hedges said.

Paula Hulleman, a MOSA senator, said she appreciated that SUNY administrators wanted to meet with students, but was concerned when administrators avoided questions about the stability plan.

“After I left the meeting, I was a little bit blindsided,” Hulleman said. “I would like to believe that they truly did want to get to know their students. But in the end, it did feel bizarre to come into a meeting where they were supposed to get to know you.”

Vera described the administrators’ attitude in the meeting as “dismissive.”

The meeting inspired the MOSA executive board to draft “A Call for Shared Governance,” a statement that called for student support to pass a MOSA resolution titled “Inclusive Governance in Stability Planning.” The resolution calls for the university to include student representatives, faculty and staff in conversations about budgetary plans.

“These students are from backgrounds where they’re working four jobs to be able to stay in college, being told by SUNY that they have to be ‘grateful’ when they’re asking questions and being told that they’re angry,” Vera said. “Things like that are very dismissive to students.”

Vera said the resolution passed unanimously on Oct. 30 and has now led to the creation of a Stability Planning Committee, formed by the ESF’s academic governance.

Mahoney said in her statement that she “welcomes any and all feedback,” as ESF works to fulfill the stability plan’s goals.

After the resolution also passed through ESF’s academic governance, including faculty and staff members, Mahoney agreed to attend a Nov. 13 MOSA town hall to discuss the stability plan with students.

This, Vera said, marked a positive stride in MOSA and Mahoney’s working relationship — but other students feel differently.

Micah Fulmer, a sophomore MOSA senator, said she feels Mahoney and other administrators have continued to “raise eyebrows” as they engage with students.

“There’s a lot of fear as to what’s going to happen, and it causes emotions to run a lot higher,” Fulmer said. “At that town hall, we definitely saw that.”

At the town hall, MOSA gave the floor to Mahoney and ESF Board of Trustees Chair John Bartow to discuss the stability plan and answer student questions.

Mahoney opened the discussion, taking about seven minutes, according to a video recording of the meeting, explaining the details of the stability plan, updates on the university’s Voluntary Separation Program and the launch of the plan’s website.

One student interjected Mahoney’s explanation, asking her to “wrap it up” and answer several student questions in the town hall’s 90-minute session. Mahoney responded, calling the request “rude.”

“If everybody agrees that you don’t want to hear where we are and where we’re going to save money, fine,” Mahoney said at the meeting. “But what’s the point of the town hall if not to share information? I’m here. We’re all on the same team. We are all ESF and we are all answering SUNY together.”

Fulmer said the exchange set an “odd tone,” especially after a student asked Mahoney if she was “fighting” for ESF, and Bartow stepped in to answer. While Fulmer believes Mahoney cares about ESF, she thought the president could do more to calmly engage with students.

“It kind of set the floor for a very ‘Oh, this is gonna be a lot, isn’t it?’ because the questions hadn’t started yet, and there was obviously some back and forth going on already with some pretty generic questions.”

Mahoney told The D.O. that she has met with MOSA and GSA leadership to continue the conversation and respond to feedback and input.

GSA did not respond to requests for comment.

Effort to strengthen shared governance takes shape

A month after MOSA unanimously passed the “Inclusive Governance in Stability Planning” resolution, ESF’s department of academic governance announced the formation of a Stability Planning Committee in a Nov. 24 email to students obtained by The D.O. The committee aims to form shared governance and transparency as the stability plan moves forward.

It will also evaluate the effects of the Voluntary Separation Program and other efforts to reduce staff, as well as recommend “actions to college leadership” and work to ensure decisions are inclusive of those affected.

The committee will include 18 total members — two of which are reserved for faculty, 12 for staff, a seat for an undergraduate and a seat for a graduate student. Two committee member-at-large seats are reserved for faculty and staff, according to the email.

Self-nominations for the committee closed Monday, and the names of the members have not been released as of Thursday morning.

The voluntary separation program saw 41 applicants, Smith said. Applicants had until Monday to accept their severance offers, he said, and those who will leave the university at the end of the academic year will be announced over the next week.

Mahoney told The D.O. she will continue to work with the committee as stability planning continues.

“Most importantly, we will demonstrate to SUNY that we are collectively committed to the long-term financial sustainability of ESF,” she wrote.

MOSA also passed a resolution at the 2025 SUNY Student Association fall conference in November, calling on SUNY to develop a fair funding model for all SUNY schools undergoing stability planning. Vera said MOSA is also developing coalitions with other schools to start their own fair funding campaigns.

From a faculty standpoint, Smith is skeptical. He said the committee might be operating more to “save face” rather than actually seek community input.

“I hope I’m wrong in that the administration does engage with this coalition of the willing right that wants to see good solutions that make sense and have the knowledge to do that,” Smith said.

As ESF students await the launch of the stability committee, Vera said he’s excited to start a new chapter with Mahoney — but remains steadfast in creating a culture of accountability.

“We kind of mended a relationship with Joanie,” Vera said. “My role here is to ensure that relationship is accountable, not just with me, not just with specific students, but with all of our student body.”

Published on December 4, 2025 at 6:11 am
Contact Brenne: bsheeh03@syr.edu