We’re All In. Is Trinity?

Alex Gervais ’28

Graphic Design Editor

Today, on April 8, Trinity will have its annual All-In Day. It’s a time of giving, when Trinity asks its alumni and students to donate to an institution that has given so much to them. Signs go up around campus, tables are set up outside Mather and our social media feeds are blitzed to get us to go “all in.” The school pitches it as “an opportunity to come together as one connected community to make great things happen for Trinity College and today’s students.” Some are asked to give five dollars, others 5,000, but it all goes back to investing in our bastion of higher education. 

This day of philanthropy comes as higher education is fundamentally under attack. The Trump administration has enacted a series of executive orders over their first two months in office, cutting tens of billions of dollars from research institutions. They’ve forced Ivy League schools to bend the knee, withholding $400 million from Columbia University and $510 million from Brown in response to alleged “anti-semitism” on their campuses. They’ve attacked diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) efforts on college campuses, daring schools to defy their rulings and watch their spigot of federal funding run dry. Students themselves have become targets of this administration’s demagoguery, nearly a dozen being detained by ICE so far. These detainments aren’t happening only at far off Ivy League PHD programs, they’re happening right here in the NESCAC, with Rümeysa Öztürk, a Tufts graduate student being kidnapped by ICE and sent to a detention center in Louisiana in late March. While Trinity has publicly reaffirmed its commitment to protecting its students, there’s no guarantee that you or your classmates have fully escaped the outstretched grasp of tyranny. 

During this time of uncertainty, I watch along with my fellow students and Trinity’s alumni as the school’s money sits idly by in the endowment. The felonious freefall of the S&P 500 and the Dow Jones ensure that Trinity’s investment portfolio looks far less rosy than it did when I first stepped onto campus last fall. Each payment of crescendoing zeroes on NelNet Commerce is a reminder of what each of us give up to be here: whether or not we give our pocket change to a donation campaign, all of us are fiscally “all in” on Trinity just by paying tuition. I must wonder, is Trinity “all in” on us?

At this crossroads in higher education’s financial viability, Trinity can reaffirm its commitment to its student body by stepping up and leading. It isn’t just the large, vocally liberal schools that are under attack, it’s a full frontal assault on all schools not named Liberty University. In her March 10 Letter from the Editor, the Tripod’s Editor-in-Chief Olivia Silvey ’25 called for Trinity to make policy changes to protect students, a stance I applaud. It is time now for Trinity to not just make policy changes to physically protect their students on campus, but to liquidate endowment to protect their education. Trinity has a $900 million dollar slush fund saved for a rainy day. It’s a fail safe we can only siphon five percent out of each year, there as the emergency backup. Yet, I wonder, is this not an emergency? Can the skies of higher education get any darker than they have today? 

Trinity has a rare opportunity to step up to the plate and face the moment. As other schools with national brands roll over and allow their coffers to be raided, Trinity can assert its financial independence from the federal government. It would be a powerful statement that a school with conservative roots and conservative donors stuck its neck out for its students. We can daringly fund our own research and use our own money, setting a brave example for not only our better endowed NESCAC peers, but for the rest of higher education. If Trinity wants to prove to its students and alumni that it’s just as “all in” as all of us are, then it’s time for administration and the Board of Trustees to block out the noise and act.