When the God of Wealth Demands Sacrifice: Stetson’s Cuts and the Cost of Ego

Plutus: Blinded by Zeus, this god scatters wealth without aim 

At Stetson University, money seems to move like Plutus, the Greek god of wealth – blindly and capriciously distributed, while students are left to piece together whatever happens to come through the grapevine. Budget cuts slice through departments, leaving faculty, staff and students scrambling for scraps as whispers of worry echo against the walls of these once hallowed halls. As Florida’s oldest private university, Stetson draws substantial revenue through tuition, auxiliary income through things like summer programs, gifts and investments. Our robust endowment – the investment fund that provides ongoing income for the university’s needs – supports many of the institution’s longstanding pillars. But what good is this bounty of resources if they are being consumed faster than they can be replenished – especially when it's for purposes not central to the mission of the university?

✼ Just [Don’t] Do It

Stetson has invested an unprecedented amount into the athletics department, but lacks justifiable revenue to match. According to a Report from the Chair of the Faculty Senate, dated May 2025, the Athletics program operated at a $13.6 million deficit and, for the past seven years, it has run at an average annual deficit of $11.25 million. University President Christopher F. Roellke defends these numbers by noting that “there are only 12 institutions in the entire United States that have a favorable balance sheet when it comes to intercollegiate athletics.” That may be true, but not quite as many schools stand as deep in the red as Stetson. With such wide margins of uncorrected error, surely the money has to come from somewhere, right? 

Believe it or not, the subsidies that keep Division I athletics afloat at Stetson come from its students. The May 2025 report states plainly: last year, each non-athlete student paid roughly $6,013 of their tuition, over a third of the average bill, solely to subsidize Division I athletics for the 17% of students who participate. There are around 350 D1 schools, according to the NCAA. There are nearly 6,000 colleges and universities in the country, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. As it currently stands, Stetson has 18 Division I teams and approximately 460 athletes. These numbers are comparable to the likes of the University of Florida and Florida State University, which both boast 19 teams and approximately 500 athletes. However, one cannot compete where they do not compare. The Hatters absolutely do not have the cult following of the Gators or Seminoles that rake in sales from tickets, merch and broadcast contracts, nor do we have tens of thousands of students to strike a proportionate balance between athletes and non-athletes. According to the Sports Business Journal, UF athletics saw over $200 million in revenue in fiscal 2024. Meanwhile, Stetson can barely pack the ‘stadium’ we share with the local high school. 

According to an anonymous member of faculty, Stetson would gain $8.2 million if the Athletics Department shut down and we lost all athletes, gain $11.2 million if the Athletics Department closed and we kept all athletes as non-athletes and gain $15.9 million if we closed the Athletics Department and replaced them with new, non-athletic students. 

Let me assure you, this is not a battle cry to dismantle the Athletics Department. This is a wake-up call for the administration to stop placing so much emphasis on facets of Stetson that are not central to the institution’s goals of academic success. The desire to have a strong Athletics Department full of winners, no matter the cost or how much is lost, takes vital resources away from student-facing departments. 

Much of this cost is poured into Stetson’s football team. Since its reinstatement in 2013, after an unsuccessful “athletics expansion initiative” from former university President Wendy Libby, the Hatters have yet to see many notable wins – let alone a championship title. At the time of writing this, Stetson Football has lost three out of four games played this season, including a notable loss against Harvard, 59-7. My cohorts in student journalism over at the Harvard Crimson made quick work of this embarrassing show-up with a whole article about it titled, “Harvard Football Dominates Stetson 59-7 in Season Opener.” 

I was told by President Roellke and Chief Financial Officer Jeremy DiGorio to look into the fact that the Atlantic Sun Conference (ASUN) and Western Athletic Conference (WAC) will soon be forming a consortium. They implied, as did the ASUN press release, that this was a saving grace to make Division I sports more affordable, but neither gave immediate specifics as to how. 

So why keep pouring funds into a program that isn’t delivering results – not for students, not for faculty and certainly not for Stetson’s reputation? Although there may never be a clear answer as to why, we can always be sure of who makes these decisions. 

✼ Frozen and Empty: Layoffs and Permanent Structural Changes

When we find ourselves stuck in financial insufficiency, there is usually a loose plug waiting to be pulled. That being said, oftentimes we tug the plugs of our own life support, just to say we went out with a bang. Stetson operates at a total asset value of $741 million – $416 million of that makes up our endowment, according to Roellke. A quarter of this endowment acts as an unrestricted portion, or quasi-endowment, from which “Stetson continues to draw unsustainably,” as noted in an Update from the President dated July 28, 2025. 

The Board of Trustees has required “…at least $3 million in permanent structural budget

savings in each of the next three fiscal years.” Here are some ways this is achieved: strategic building closures during the summer and other energy efficiencies, operating budget cutbacks in Campus Life and Student Success – which include reductions in summer orientation and other student services – and a hiring freeze. According to CFO DiGorio, “$2 million of those [cuts] were based on compensation, [so] about 29 positions across departments, 45% of those positions were vacant.” What happened to the other 55% – who can say? 

✼ Taking the “Trust” out of Trustees

Trust, in both its forms, is essential to university function. For those at Stetson, trust is the belief that their university will honor its mission to invest in the future of its community. For the Board of Trustees, however, trust takes on a second definition – a financial trust: a hedge fund to be managed, guarded and, when necessary, cut.

The Board of Trustees acts as the group responsible for fiduciary functions on campus, and the Faculty Committee on Finance and the Budget (FCFB) acts as its adviser; the two are at odds over how Stetson will manage its finances going forward, finding very little common ground. 

In March of 2025, a Resolution from the FCFB was unanimously submitted to the Faculty Senate, delineating multiple instances of financial mismanagement. For example, the budget for the DeLand campus in fiscal 2024 saw a net deterioration of $7.3 million from April 2024 to June 2024, closing with a $6.7 million deficit – despite receipt of a boosting, one-time $5 million gift towards operating expenses. DeLand campus also boasts a structural deficit that exceeds 10% of the budget – which is more than $10 million, by the way. This deficit stemmed primarily from losses in the athletics program, which were at least $13.6 million in fiscal year 2024. 

While the FCFB attempts to extinguish fiduciary fires, the Officers of the Board of Trustees do everything in their power to ensure that the best optics are presented to the student body. Although, in theory, this structure could work like a well-oiled machine, it more so functions as a broken game of telephone – except not fully as a result of mixed-up numbers and figures, but seemingly as a result of higher-ups cutting and crossing wires.

The resolution states that the FCFB has “repeatedly recommended cost-saving measures for financial sustainability,” such as a COVID-19 contingency plan and its recommendations to improve budgeting from Spring ‘23. The FCFB also made a report in agreement with the Budget Office to share a report that showed a “$13.6 million cost of athletics.”  Despite these attempts to diagnose and remedy, the resolution also states that “the President shared that report with the Board [of Trustees] Chair, but also shared a draft version of the report that includes erroneous numbers about athletics and academic revenues.” Not to mention, “the Chair of the Board Financial Health Committee received both reports” – the agreed-upon version and the “erroneous” version – yet “neither report was included in that committee’s materials for the February 2025 meeting.” 

Not only are there misreportings of where the money is going, but the resolution states that the FCFB has witnessed “executive payment practices from the Board of Trustees that are excessive and inappropriate for a private nonprofit university.” In fiscal 2022, $249,000 was awarded to the former university President, Wendy Libby, along with a year-long “sabbatical” for the 2020-2021 academic year. This sabbatical, awarded to her by the Board of Trustees, was in direct violation of faculty policy on sabbatical leaves, as “faculty must return for at least one year after a sabbatical.” Libby stepped down in 2020, saw to her sabbatical for the next year and never returned – on top of that, an additional award of $717,000 was given to her during the sabbatical itself. 

Independent scrutiny has also echoed the concerns of the FCFB; in an audit commissioned for fiscal 2024, available on ProPublica, the auditor reported a “material weakness in Stetson’s internal financial controls,” raising doubts about the university’s ability to reliably track and report funds. The audit also flagged “conflict-of-interest transactions” involving key officers and affiliates, required to be disclosed on the annual tax return. 

In the words of the FCFB, “we have been repeatedly told that revenue growth through increased enrollment will resolve budget problems despite four consecutive years of FTIC enrollment under 700 … cost controls are strict in academics, where any budget overage is corrected and not repeated, but controls are lacking in athletics, which went over budget by $2 million in fiscal 2024 on an operational budget of just over $4 million.” As for the budget deficits for fiscal 2024 and fiscal 2025, “we have been informed that [they] … are paid for with cash reserves that could have been invested elsewhere if budget changes had been enacted sooner.”

It is for these reasons that in March 2025, the FCFB unanimously concluded: “[we have] no confidence in the fiscal management of the DeLand Campus of Stetson University.”

✼ Stetson’s Brain Drain: Farewells from Faculty 

The administration has assured me that no layoffs have been directed to faculty, but when push comes to shove, sometimes faculty can’t take it anymore. For two professors, Drs. Scott Semenya and Steven Smallpage, this was exactly the case. 

Dr. Semenya, a professor of Psychology, who now teaches at MacEwan University in Canada, previously taught at Stetson University beginning in 2022. He resigned in 2024. In a letter from him, addressed to the Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at the time, Dr. David Hill. He states, “I accepted the position at Stetson because I was so impressed … [I] anticipated dynamic personal classroom experiences, and was assured by other faculty that the merit pay system at Stetson could bring long-term rewards.” Semenya felt as though “the institution was either unable or unwilling to prioritize faculty compensation, including merit increases, and this austerity had no clear end.”

“My entrance into the classroom was similarly alarming. I could not believe the low caliber of the students in front of me and felt conflicted about passing students who lacked core competencies while the administration obsessed over retention,” Semenya said. But this is no jab at the students, as he continues, “Such deficiencies are a direct result of nonexistent admissions standards, and poor retention means many of my colleagues upheld rigor.” 

“There is lavish spending on athletics and capital projects, but stagnant faculty compensation receives only mumbled apologies…I see no financial future here because I do not know if or when my salary will increase, or by how much, and the administration has telegraphed only murky (potential) improvement … I enjoy my department and the city very much, but I cannot afford to stay,” Semenya wrote. 

And this is not an issue of personal affairs, “This is a recipe for competent faculty making the same difficult decision I have — leaving for institutions that prioritize academics over athletics and offer compensation commensurate with scholarly productivity and the local cost of living.”

Steven Smallpage was a tenured Associate Professor of the Political Science department and a Faculty Director at the Stetson University Center for Public Opinion Research. He now works as a tenured Associate Professor at the University of Central Florida in the School of Politics, Security and International Affairs. 

During his time at Stetson, Smallpage served as Chair of the Faculty Senate, giving him a front row seat to the university’s financial and administrative decisions. His resignation letter, sent to all Stetson faculty, says, “We are a university with a remarkable faculty, students with open minds, and a long and proud tradition—and yet we are trapped in a structural fiscal deficit that’s truly become an existential crisis.” 

Similar to the words of Semenya, Smallpage remarks on the morale among faculty after years of budget cuts and austerity, “Year after year. Budget after budget. Morale has crumbled and the faculty and staff that could leave have already left, and those who remain look over their shoulders and wonder if it’s time to go, too — or whether there’s enough time left until they retire.”

“Over my 10 years at Stetson, I have been in meetings where we were told repeatedly that there’s more that faculty should be doing to fix a mess that we didn’t create,” Smallpage said. “[That] it’s our curriculum, our academic policies, or our advising model—that it’s somehow our fault that the retention and graduation rates have worsened during the unprecedented decade of investments in things outside of our classrooms.”

As a result, Smallpage has decided to depart from the university. “In time, my family will move out of DeLand. We will move out of the house we bought to stay nearest to campus. And I’ll have to watch, from a distance, as a place I gave my heart to stands at a crossroads.”

As Stetson stands at that crossroads, we are faced with many difficult decisions. This is not an issue of one specific person to point fingers at, but rather an amalgamation of higher-up mishaps. For almost a decade, we have borne witness to a pattern of decisions that treat athletics as untouchables and academics as expendables. Professors like Semenya and Smallpage have made their choice, as have the Board of Trustees. The question is no longer if we can afford to change, but whether we can afford not to, especially in a time when Stetson is so concerned with retention. How many more faculty, staff and students will it take before the university admits the cost of ego may well be the institution itself? The world may never know – nor will higher-ups dare to let them.