On the morning of March 27, the first day of the strike, Provost Courtney Coile sent out an email detailing the College’s plan for students to receive the credit despite many classes being cancelled. Coile asked students to enroll in new courses taught by tenure-track faculty to make up for lost contact hours and announced that students would receive 0.5 credits for courses taught by striking union members. 

It had been a little over eight weeks of course instruction at that point into the semester and given accreditation policies enforced by the New England Commission of Higher Education, the College deemed the credit change and course registration necessary to comply with the requirements for contact hours in order to maintain its accreditation. 

But for many students, these new policies have brought a wave of confusion, anxiety, and frustration. 

Ava Wilcox ’25, a senior history major, described her initial reaction as one of “fear and anxiety,” as she knew she would fall below full-time status, compounded by the already tense atmosphere on campus. Wilcox said, “I immediately reached out to the Class Dean, but the email was very vague. I didn’t know what to do.”

Wilcox enrolled in a new class in the Women and Gender Studies Department to keep her full-time status. However, she notes that the class only meets for two of the remaining four class sessions. “There was so much worry about contact hours, but I’m not even going to be in this class for more than six hours. The class itself is serious, but my participation in it feels like a joke.”

Wilcox expressed dissatisfaction with her “hollow” educational experience. “It just feels like a filler, like I’m just doing this so I can’t ask for my tuition back, but it doesn’t actually have value as a credit,” she said. 

Wilcox also felt skeptical about the administration’s motives, stating “my feeling is that educational value has kind of been swept aside just to get more leverage for admin in the union negotiations under the guise of education. There is some sort of obfuscation from the administration about what the impulses behind the plan are, and people are upset about that generally.”

First-year Ava Cantaoi ’28, a prospective political science major, was similarly taken aback by the abrupt changes. “I was definitely taken aback, especially given it was the day the strike started,” she said. “It was very overwhelming. There wasn’t even a lot of time for me to react.”

Cantaoi was originally enrolled in four classes, three of which were taught by NTT faculty. When the new credit policies were announced, she found herself below the threshold for full-time status, and she had to enroll in three new classes. “But because I didn’t have [the] prerequisites for other classes, I’ve been learning different things from before.”

Cantaoi stated that the transition has been challenging to the new classes. “Professors are doing as much as they can to help out, but I don’t really know what’s happening, and I’m also expected to keep moving forward with the new content,” said Cantaoi.

“I’ve been going with the mentality of doing the minimum to pass. I’m just trying to get my money’s worth out of this semester and go through so I can pass,” Cantaoi said, describing a sense of resignation both for her and amongst her peers. “These policies will have short-term and long-term effects for students.”

On the campus community, Cantaoi added, “As a student, as a product of these policies and what is happening to the school right now, it feels like not a lot of students can find comfort or community in this because nothing like this has happened before.”

Wilcox added that the credit changes have only strengthened her support for the union. “As soon as they announced the credits, I wanted to go to the picket line and it made me want to support the union more.”

As of last week, WOAW has announced the strike is over and students and faculty have returned back to the classroom.

Contact the editors responsible for this story: Sazma Sarwar and Valida Pau

The summit, titled “We the People: Finding Common Purpose”, would bring together policymakers, scholars, and leaders working in “peacemaking, community building, the arts, and government.” 

Among the speaker list was former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton ‘69, Congresswoman Emily Randall ‘08, and Arkansas State Senator Jamie Scott. 

All members of the Wellesley College community were invited to attend the summit by President Paula Johnson, either virtually or in-person. In-person tickets for the event were completely sold out prior to the cancellation.

Citing the ongoing strike on campus, the College, in an email to all registrants, said that their primary responsibility at the moment is  “to focus on our students and negotiations with the union to find a path forward that benefits our students, faculty, and our community–and that avoids further disruption to our academic program.”

In a post to X today, WOAW-UAW wrote, “We’re grateful to the Summit speakers who told the President of Wellesley that they will not cross our picket line, which led to the rescheduling of this event. However, we remain disappointed that the College is committed to prolonging our strike.”

 A closing dinner for current sophomore Clinton Fellows will still be happening. The Summit is set to be rescheduled for the fall but no concrete plans are in place.

This federal funding is necessary to contribute to critical medical research, from supporting under-resourced schools and ensuring every kid has the right to a robust education to providing assistance for working families to put food on the table or a roof over their heads. But this is to be expected from an administration whose Department of Education has put civil rights investigations on halt and whose chair of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has stopped the agency from doing the work it was established to do. 

As of Feb. 14, more than 250,000 government workers have either lost their jobs or are in the process of getting their offers terminated. While the Trump administration and Musk, who has become the de facto president, claim that these agencies and employees were employed in doing things like sending $50 million worth of condoms to Gaza (not true), this assault is in fact on the work that supports Americans of all backgrounds and allows for the United States to be the leader on the world stage when it comes to scientific innovation.

While Tesla gets a $400 million contract with the State Department for armored trucks (any conflict of interest here), Congress is considering $2 trillion of cuts to Medicaid, which provides funding for millions of sick Americans, regardless of their financial situation. 

The Trump administration has taken its close margin of an electoral victory in November to be a mandate from the whole country, to exert the office of the presidency however they like, believing themselves to be unstoppable. Instead of taking these actions through the legislative process, the administration has overwhelmed the country with a blizzard of executive orders that threaten every aspect of American life and everyday people’s ability to go about their lives with dignity. 

In high school, I spent my summers interning for my local state representative and assisting constituents, people from my hometown in the Midwest, getting access to a whole host of benefits from food to housing assistance, that every American is entitled to as a resident of this country. I came to Wellesley inspired by the school’s history of producing women who go on into roles of public service.

Seeing the assault on federal workers, those who ensure that this nation’s resources are harnessed to help the most vulnerable, is insulting. Elon Musk, the world’s wealthiest man, claiming that recipients of federal aid are part of the “parasite class,” is a slap in the face to every single taxpayer who asks the government simply for a life of dignity instead of getting subsidies for their trillion-dollar companies. 

These cuts to federal funding are not just an attempt to make the government more efficient, or even a totalitarian assault on institutions of democracy, but signal signs of a society from which kindness and empathy are starting to disappear. Referring to the needy who pay their taxes and receive minimum support as mooching off the government, reflect the world we live in where the whims of an egotistical billionaire have repercussions for millions. Poverty, disease, unrest –– a democratic government has a responsibility to address these issues because they affect everyone once our leaders stop carrying, we face a troubling future for our society.

Issued by Public Safety and Campus Police, the new policy requires student organizations to go through campus security in order to receive the service of security personnel. The cost of these services are to be paid from the funds of each organization. 

At a presentation at Senate on Nov. 4, Deputy Chief Ken Ferguson and Lieutenant Ibrahim Dumbuya spoke on a range of initiatives that the office of Campus Police and Public Safety is responsible for, including providing security for events. Ferguson and Dumbuya explained that the amount of event security needed per event is determined by a range of factors, such as the expected number of attendees and nature of an event. The responsibilities of these personnel include monitoring the area to deter potential issues, assisting with crowd control and emergency evacuations, and coordinating with the event organizers and emergency services if necessary. 

For events with 100 attendees, one security personnel is needed – this number increases with the number of attendees. The hourly rate for a Wellesley College Public Safety Officer is $55 per hour with a five-hour minimum. Security Officers charge $40 per hour with a four-hour minimum. Notably, the security company lowered this rate from the original $45 an hour and waived the 10% security fee. 

One of the biggest events on campus this semester was Rocky Horror, an annual Halloween tradition of screening and shadow-acting of The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Over 600 students attended the show this October. 

Rocky Horror did not have an organization to be housed under this year, so it sought funding from Student Organization Funding Committee (SOFC) recreational grant in order to put on the show. Millie Auslender ’27, the director of the show this year, spoke to the News about the challenges of navigating both the finances and logistics of security at the event. 

“We knew there would need to be security, but they didn’t even reach out to me when I reserved the space on 25Live … after meeting with Campus Police, they quoted us for five officers which were two public safety officers and three outside officers, so that’s how much we requested from SOFC,” Auslender said. “The issue in my opinion is that the school is making us pay for the security for events but then also not giving us sufficient money to pay for it.”

Katherine Deane ’25, the student bursar, mentioned that security has always been involved at many Wellesley events and has been funded by student organizations. The change in the policy this year is the rate.

 “The college used to use a company called Bay Colony Security pre-2019. They charged $20/hour for a minimum of 4 hours. Then, the college seemingly switched to spell out acronym (RSIG) when Bay Colony went out of business – RSIG charged $37/hour for 4 hours. Then after some problems with RSIG, the college switched to Frontier this year. They originally charged $45/hour for 4 hours, but Campus Safety recently negotiated down to $40/hour for 4 hours.”

Auslender sees the issue of security as part of a broader trend at Wellesley of policing social events at the school, stating that Rocky Horror has traditionally been a safe space for queer students to express themselves. Auslender said the presence of so much security could endanger the safety of the space: 

“We were talking in that meeting [with campus police] about how queer spaces have been historically overpoliced … in the past two to three years at least, there has not been security in the actual event,” Auslander said.

Specifically for Rocky Horror, a show that is intimate and sexual in nature, Auslander voiced her concerns about older, male security personnel.

“We don’t want [the security] looking at our actors, possibly judging them, and making them feel uncomfortable,” Auslender said. “We communicated that we’re willing to have public safety there in case there’s a medical emergency, but we don’t want the space to feel policed.”

Deane encouraged students to reach out for any information or ideas about the process, also noting the potential for other changes to keep up with changing security costs:

“We’re already having conversations about raising the student activity fee to better serve organizations generally … The reason student organizations pay for security is because it is not accounted for within the other fixed budgets at the college, such as Campus Safety’s budget. It’s important to keep students safe at events, and everyone has to work within a budget, but are there ways to increase other budgets in order for student orgs to have less of a financial burden?” Deane said.

Election betting markets raise a lot of questions about the integrity of American elections. Allowing for firms and individuals to bet millions of dollars on these contests increases the motivation to try to manipulate both the market as well as possibly, the factors impacting free and fair elections. Allowing the wealthy to bet on politics essentially puts pressure saying that the most influential firms and individuals in society are betting their prospects on the outcome of one candidate over another. Betting might provide some signal within the noise, but this signal has the power to suppress the voice and direction that the people might provide. 

That’s not to say that there aren’t “benefits” to election betting. In a time where public opinion polling has become increasingly difficult, due to the shift in consumer technology and reluctance on the part of many voters to pick up the phone and engage in long surveys, social scientists and pundits have had to turn to other sources to tease out this data. Given that individuals want their wagers to be fruitful, where they’re putting their money can help understand the broader sentiments of these gamblers. However, these individuals are also not at all indicative of most Americans and questions are being raised about how much looking at election betting trends can tell us about popular sentiment on the whole. 

Polling regulations and integrity issues aside, my fundamental issue with election betting speaks to the broader trend in our media and political ecosystem of seeing politics as a spectacle rather than a process through which real individuals’ lives are impacted and systemic change can be created. In this election, as well as the past few, we’ve seen a rise in the media trying to get the most controversial soundbites out and more focus on cringe and surface-level moments from candidates rather than an actual discussion of policy preferences. Election betting further adds to the increasingly prevalent approach of seeing politics as a game. I admit – I’ve discussed election betting extensively with some of my friends and a lot of people see it as a way to get something out of a process they are increasingly frustrated with and feel as if they have no say in. At the same time, most concerning is the fact that it’s the wealthy that are increasingly turning to these sites and gambles to not just hope but directly exercise financial power to influence the markets and hopefully get a gamble that will work for them. 

In a time where the wealthy are increasingly able to put their thumbs on the scale of politics and tilt a democratic process that should be in the hands of the people – Elon Musks’ $130 million towards Trump’s eventually successful campaign being a key example – it’s more important than ever that the government crackdown and ban election betting. The prevalent rampant neoliberal ideologies in our society that say that the wealthy should be able to abuse their financial power however they like have fundamentally shifted the legal window of what is acceptable, and it’s time that this worldview be rejected, that the wealthy can bet on whoever they like and exercise power in a process that should be equal for every citizen. 

The results from this Tuesday are bleak for this worldview – the wide range of policies on election betting, as well as every other financial regulation and election administration policy, is going to shift rightward for the next four years. The work of dismantling these ideologies might take decades. That’s why continued participation within the political system is so important. More than ever, Tuesday’s result shows that informed engagement is more important than ever and that these decisions are being fought out in every sector of our society. If we want power to go back to the people, politics needs to be seen as a sacred process and no longer a spectacle.

Contact the editor(s) responsible for this story: Caitlin Donovan

Wellesley College employees donated predominantly to Democratic political campaigns this past year, yet sums lagged significantly behind what they gave in the past two elections.

Employees donated a total of $64,778.78 in 2024 to various political campaigns, political action committees (PACs) and candidates, according to publically available data from the Federal Election Commission (FEC) as of Oct. 29, 2024. The average contribution per employee was $51.95. 

99.69% of funds, or $64,582.73, were donated to Democratic campaigns or Democrat-affiliated organizations. College employees only donated $195.05, or 0.03% of contributions to Republican campaigns or Republican-affiliated organizations.

ActBlue, a fundraising platform and PAC aligned with Democratic candidates across the nation, received $24,270.01. Many of these contributions were earmarked for various Democratic campaigns, with many people contributing to Democratic congressional candidates in various races across the country. 

Harris for President and the Harris Victory Fund, two campaigns directly tied to Vice President Kamala Harris’s campaign, received $27,699.37 collectively. 

Democratic Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown’s campaign received $2,175, making it the fifth most contributed campaign. The incumbent three-term senator ultimately lost to former car dealer Bernie Moreno, flipping the seat to the Republican Party.
From President Biden’s abrupt exit and Harris’ late rise to power to two assassination attempts against Trump, this year’s election experienced several reversals of political momentum.
The News finds that the number of donations per day spiked during three pivotal moments. 

On June 30, there were a total of 34 donations. This comes after Biden’s disappointing debate performance on June 27, which prompted the Democrats to urge Biden to drop out of the race. 

The next spike came on July 21, when President Biden withdrew from the race, the number of donations increased to 64. On Aug. 22, the last day of the Democratic National Convention when Harris officially accepted the Democratic presidential nomination, the numbers hit a record high of 77. 

The 2024 election cycle saw Democrats outraised Republicans by nearly twice as much, as of October 2024. According to ABC, the Harris campaign along with the DNC and state Democratic Party committees raised $652 million within the span of July to September in comparison to the Trump campaign and GOP’s $340 million within the same period. The Harris campaign and the Democrat’s raised over a billion over the course of her less than four month campaign period. 

Surprisingly, campaign contributions from Wellesley employees in 2024 trail significantly behind past presidential election years. 

In 2016, members of the College community contributed a total of $144,006.41 to political campaigns. It is possible that much of this could be attributed to on-campus excitement toward the prospect of Hillary Clinton ’69 making history to be the first female president of the United States.

In 2020, members of the College community contributed a total of $131,992.07, still more than double the amount contributed this year. Both the 2016 and 2020 figures do not consider money contributed after Election Day. The significant decrease in contributions for 2024 possibly reflects the parallel decrease in voter turnout in 2024.

Wellesley also trails behind peer institutions in the amount of total dollars contributed. For example, Barnard College leads among historical women’s colleges, contributing $37,076.38 more than Wellesley. Williams College, another elite liberal arts school, $16,709.67. The difference in contributions between Wellesley and other schools raises questions as to the differences in political culture among these schools.

The Wellesley News reached out to the top donors . They either declined to comment or did not respond to requests for comments.

The graduates honored at the Diana Chapman Walsh Alumnae Hall were Claire Parkinson ‘70, Joanne Berger-Sweeney ‘79, and Amy Weaver ‘89. The work of the three recipients span the fields of climatology, neuroscience, higher education administration, the corporate world and the law. 

Parkinson graduated from Wellesley as a mathematics major but discovered in her last semester that astronomy fascinated her. Parkinson was the first of her family to attend college, and she had always wanted to work on science but also understand its application with the broader world. 

After Wellesley, Parkinson attended Ohio State, where she received her PhD and joined the Antarctica expedition as part of its Institute for Polar Studies. Despite being the only woman on the expedition, this strip, alongside a summer working at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, convinced her to spend her life studying the climate. 

  Parkinson has worked at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center since 1978 as one of the world’s leading climatologists, understanding the development of the Earth’s climate models and systems. She also worked on communicating to the public the state of the earth’s climate and the necessity to find solutions. The recipient of many honors, including the Goldthwait Polar Medal, Parkinson continues to conduct critical research and engage the public in the study of global climate change. 

Weaver studied political science and American studies at Wellesley. Coming from a family of lawyers, Weaver attended Harvard Law School after college, clerked for the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, and worked in Hong Kong for a member of the Hong Kong Legislative Council. She entered private practice there as well and then moved to Expedia, serving as Executive Vice President, Senior Vice President, and Deputy General Counsel at Expedia. 

Since 2017, Weaver has served as the President of Salesforce, a Fortune 500 company, which she joined in 2013 as Senior Vice President and General Counsel. In 2020, Weaver was appointed Chief Financial Officer (CFO) of the company, thus becoming one  of the few women who serve a high role at a company of such scale. 

Under Weaver, Salesforces’ revenue has increased significantly and its ranking in the Fortune 500 has gone up. Weaver credits her time at Wellesley as motivating her to amplify the voices of women leaders and the Wellesley network as being a group that has had her back her entire life. 

Berger-Sweeney graduated from Wellesley with a degree in neuroscience.. Berger-Sweeney went on to receive her PhD in neurotoxicology at the Johns Hopkins University’s School of Public Health.

 She has spent her scientific career studying a variety of neuroscience topics, including working on a drug used to treat Alzheimer. Berger-Sweeney came back to Wellesley in 1991, serving as the Head of the Neuroscience Department and then the Associate Dean of 20 years, becoming the first African American woman at the College to become a full professor. She then went on to serve as Dean of the School of Arts and Sciences at Tufts and is now the President of Trinity College in Connecticut. 

In an interview with The News, Berger-Sweeney emphasized how transformational Wellesley was in instilling her a love of learning, curiosity, and finding connections between seemingly unconnected things. Wellesley offered a space for her to fully thrive and develop a deep sense of equity, something she’s carried as she soared through the ranks of science and higher education. 

“It is truly special to be back at Wellesley. The weather is glorious, the campus is beautiful, there is so much vitality in the students I’ve met and there’s nothing quite like being honored on your own.” 

In offering advice to current Wellesley students, Berger-Sweeney said, “Enjoy your time here. Wellesley is a magical place and it is really about the best that higher education in the United States has to offer and I just hope that the people who are here appreciate the incredibly powerful network you are a part of by being a Wellesley student and in the future, a Wellesley alum.”

Contact the editors responsible for this story: Lyanne Wang

In June of 2023, the Supreme Court banned affirmative action, which had been practiced for decades in college admissions across the country. As schools dived into the 2023-24 admissions cycle, admissions offices had to reevaluate how their process was. 

“We had to reevaluate how our admissions process would be and did not have that data point [racial or ethnic background] in this process … we were fortunate to have the concept of a holistic review process and looking at all the contents of an applicant’s admissions file,” said Peaches Valdes, Dean of Admissions and Financial Aid at the College, who is in her third year at Wellesley and has been working in the field for almost 35 years. 

Wellesley wasn’t the only school to see these shifts in racial makeup of its admitted class. At Amherst, a fellow liberal arts institution, the share of Black students in the incoming class decreased by 11% to 3%. Similar trends were seen at MIT, Tufts and Harvard, alongside an increase in Asian enrollment. Meanwhile, at Princeton, Yale and Duke, Asian enrollment in the class of 2028 declined, suggesting that effects are not uniform across the board. 

Valdes mentioned that the Admissions Office, to comply with the decision, did not look at the racial makeup of the applicant pool and admitted pool between October 2023 and July 2024, in order to not be influenced in any way. Now that the numbers are out, she emphasized that it’s important to remember that “this is not a sprint, it is a marathon that requires resources, dedication, and motivation. You have to have a very committed community to do this and bring diversity of all walks of life.”

Among various initiatives, the Office has reintroduced student-led tours that were on pause since the pandemic. Alongside, they are working to build a robust suite of virtual offerings and provide opportunities for students to learn about the college without having to travel. Wellesley VOICE, a virtual fly-in program, was hosted this past weekend and had 200+ students from around the world engage in a faculty round table, alumni chat and student-to-student chats, allowing them to meet possible peers and classmates as well. 

The Admissions Office has been out on the road as well, traveling around the country and the world, visiting high schools, counselors and community based organizations, and bringing back that person-to-person connection. The Office has worked on interacting with prospective applicants both in the online and in school environments, allowing them to share their stories and see how Wellesley fits into their future. 

Valdes highlighted the importance of the College as a whole to engage in outreach and making students feel that they have a place at Wellesley too. 

“We want [prospective] students to hear from those who may not traditionally work in the office. It’s an awesome feeling when a parent talks to a random student on campus and they end up having a meal in Lulu … what students say and what they do and how they talk about this institution has a significant impact on a prospective student when they’re making a decision.” 

Valdes encouraged current students to reach out to the Admissions Office, with the hope that more are interested in sharing their stories. 

Many colleges offer alumni interviews to applicants as a way to better get to know the college. While Wellesley has not offered these interviews since the pandemic, the admissions team has partnered with alumni clubs across the country and found “creative ways for alumni to get involved.” While interviews are difficult to facilitate with close to 9000 applicants and interviewers are volunteers who are sharing their time, alumni will continue to be part of the outreach events as they evolve throughout the years. 

Advice for future applicants to the College? “We value authenticity, sincerity, your voice,” emphasized Valdes. “Treat college applications as another high school class. Prepare early, know what story or narrative you want to share with the Admissions Office. Now is not the time for students to be modest. Be proud and confident about what you’ve achieved and what you hope to do in the future.”

Valida Pau contributed reporting to this story.

Contact the editor responsible for this story: Sazma Sarwar

As part of its liberal arts core curriculum, Wellesley has long required students to complete coursework across a variety of academic disciplines, such as the humanities, social sciences, natural sciences and foreign languages in order to graduate, regardless of their chosen major. 

On top of existing academic requirements, this year, the Class of 2028 will be the first mandated to complete two units of experiential learning by the end of their sixth semester in order to graduate. 

Students of classes 2027 and above are exempt, but they can still submit a form to have their experiential learning units appear on their transcript.

Students can complete an array of experiences to fulfill the new requirement. These units can be “internships, research, study abroad, civic engagement, select courses and student employment positions, and more,” according to Wellesley’s Career Education department. Students are encouraged to complete as many units of experiential learning as they see fit, but two units are required to receive a Wellesley degree. 

Each experiential learning unit requires 50-150 hours of work, with two units typically being awarded for a summer-long experience and one for semester-long experiences. The College has launched a new experiential learning browser with opportunities listed that count for the requirement, for example research at the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT, and software engineering at a cybersecurity startup BitSight.

Career Education has encouraged students to meet with their Advisor for Career Exploration in order to find opportunities that interest them. 

Graduation outcome reports published by Career Education show that over 95% of Wellesley graduates every year were employed, attending graduate school and pursuing other work opportunities within six months of graduation. 

Wellesley’s push for students to complete real-life experiences comes as schools across the country have started to implement similar programs, such as Northeastern’s Co-op program. Peer liberal arts institutions, such as Williams College and Amherst College, are increasingly focusing on bridging classroom lessons to experiences in the community and around the world.

Contact the editor responsible for this story: Sazma Sarwar

The changes, which were placed into effect on Dec. 31, 2023, aim to create a simplified version of the form for applicants and their families. Other changes include the Student Aid Index (SAI) replacing Estimated Family Contribution, higher security when transferring information from the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), an increase in Pell eligibility overall, and siblings who are also in college no longer counted in the new SAI. 

“There are also changes to FAFSA terminology and definitions, such as replacing “custodial parent” with  “contributor,” Director of Student Financial Services Bonnie Quinn said. 

Recent changes to the FAFSA are part of a set of changes to streamline the financial aid process. The most significant update since the Reagan administration, the new FAFSA will award Pell Grants to more students than ever, have fewer questions with the application being available in more languages, and will allow students to apply for aid at more schools. 

“These changes are intended to make the process easier and lower barriers for students, especially those from low-income communities who may not have completed the form due to complications in previous years,” Dean of Admission and Financial Aid T. Peaches Valdes said. 

However, many students and families struggled with the newly implemented changes

“The launch of the new FAFSA did not go as smoothly as planned and colleges and universities are navigating these challenges,” Quinn said. “However, students will not be negatively impacted and schools, like Wellesley, are working hard to ensure that there is no disruption to the student experience.” 

Because the new changes were enacted at the end of the year rather than the deadline for early-decision and early-action application rounds, which are usually on Nov. 1, students believe that it creates uncertainty. 

“The change puts financial stress on low-income students who are dependent on regular access to payment dues in order to know if they can afford the following school year,” Shadia Suha ’27 said. 

Uncertainty around how changes in families’ employment status have also put pressure on students who may be navigating the process of financial aid on their own. Students may not have the information regarding employment changes in their family between now and the last time they filled out the FAFSA, and newer changes further exacerbate uncertainty around how much aid they’ll receive. 

Talulah Juniper ’27 furthered that “I did [the financial aid process] more on my own this year which was hard because I don’t have the information needed. Our employment status is also different this year.”

Furthermore, the new FAFSA is set to get rid of the “sibling discount,” which took into account the number of children a family had in college at a given time. The new calculation will not consider siblings in college, increasing the cost of attendance for families with multiple children attending college at once. 

Juniper, who has a sister also enrolled in college, mentioned that this change has made the process more confusing for their family. 

“It’s complicated with my sister because she is largely financially dependent on my parents but we can’t claim her as a dependent anymore,” they said. “They pay for her schooling and everything but now, even on top of the massive payments they’re making to Wellesley, FAFSA only sees them as paying for one child’s education.”

The new FAFSA application represents an overhaul in the system of financial aid in the world of higher education. However, the delays along the way as well as the lack of information have left students confused and seeking answers. The impacts will be felt by students in terms of whether or not they will receive aid and if so, how much. 

“The changes make me feel somewhat hopeless about the process because they can continue to make it harder for students like me to get aid but that doesn’t change that we need the aid,” Juniper said.