A week after this website went live, 31 department chairpersons and program directors here at Loyola signed and submitted a letter to the Dean on behalf of faculty and the students they serve. The letter pointed out the glaring inconsistencies and gaps in knowledge to the Dean and the administration. In my investigations, I have been able to speak to faculty and staff and collect information on the timeline of this plan. And what we have determined is concerning, to say the least.

Here is a brief timeline of the decision making process:

1. The plan to demolish Sullivan Center and build a new state-of-the-art STEM facility was announced at a Faculty Council Meeting in October, 2023.
2. In November, 2023, it was decided, without consulting the Faculty Council, that Cudahy would be the designated space for the Sullivan Center services.
3. According to the letter to the Dean, department chairpersons were only informed of this new aspect of the plan in late January, 2024. At the time this is being written, it is mid-February.
4. On February 14th, 2024, a letter was drafted, signed, and sent to Dean Peter Schraeder demanding transparency surrounding the plan to move Sullivan’s offices into Cudahy Library. More on this letter will be below.
5. By February 15th, 2024, a member of senior administration responded to the letter and stated that there has been no set plan. I spoke to a chairperson who had received this memo on February 16th, and they expressed concerns with this statement. Either there is a plan and they are deflecting, or there is no plan and they are just making it up as they go. Both options are harrowing.
6. The member of senior administration stated that there would be a plan to move forward by February. As of right now, there are a little less than 2 weeks left in February. How do they think that we will believe that a full plan will be completed in less than two weeks? How can they expect us to believe that there is no concrete plan when this has been in the works for a minimum of 6 months?
7. Sometime in March, the Board of Trustees will meet to vote on this completed plan. That leaves no time for faculty, staff, students, and other stakeholders to view and respond to the plan, much less provide critiques and alternative options. Do they expect us to simply take this lying down and allow them to do this without our input? Why the secrecy?
8. According to staff who are more familiar with the timeline than I am, Sullivan’s offices will be moved to Cudahy by the end of the semester or the start of summer. This likely means that a large chunk of Cudahy will be closed off to students during the weeks leading up to finals. How do they plan to handle this? How will students be able to access the necessary materials for their final research projects?
9. Also following this timeline, Sullivan will be demolished over the summer. What about summer session classes? Summer research opportunities and internships? How will this disrupt student life and the community?
10. Assuming this all goes to plan, the demolition will be completed and construction will be started by the time the fall semester rolls around. How will this disrupt campus traffic? How will Loyola students be expected to adapt to the disruption? What of disabled students who take certain routes to get to classes? The construction and repaving of the space between Mundelein and Piper Hall created a lot of issues for students traversing campus. How will construction of a new building be handled?
11. Apparently, the STEM facility is expected to be completed by 2025. How will that be possible? How can a state-of-the-art facilty of that caliber be erected and completed safely and securely in just about a year? Considering Loyola’s track record surrounding construction projects (see the upgrading/updating of Crown Center, for example), how can we be expected to believe this?
12. This isn’t really a timeline issue, but no plan for the offices formerly in Sullivan has been issued. Will there be an additional building constructed for these services? Or an expansion for an existing building? Is the plan just to keep them in Cudahy? Will the library be expanded? Or will we just have to accept that our most prized research facility be gutted permanently without any other alternative?

Do you see the problem here, dear readers? Because I can see multiple. This is why I made this website. Where is the transparency from Administration? Where is our representation as students, faculty, researchers, donors, alumni, community members? And why are they expecting us to take this lying down?

Now, onto the letter. I will not be posting the full thing here, as I do not wish to jeopardize any faculty or staff in doing so. But I will provide some quotes that particularly stuck out to me.

“As we have been excluded from the planning process, we can only guess at the implications of moving Sullivan services into Cudahy Library, but even basic estimates suggest the library’s brutal dismantlement.”

Someone did the math. Even two floors of Sullivan being moved into Cudahy would take up at least half, if not more, of the floorspace in Cudahy. So what’s the plan? Using rough estimates, Cudahy has roughly 900 thousand items in the facility. Assuming there are 300 thousand books per floor, if two floors are gutted for these offices, that will be at least 450 thousand books. This doesn’t include the 320 thousand books stored below Sullivan. What will they do with the 770 thousand or more books and reference materials? How will they compensate for the extreme loss of study space? Will the books be stored, or simply discarded?

We reject blithe assumptions that the books are old or somehow no longer of value. Indeed, the Library has carefully curated its collection over decades in a cautious fashion; the collection reached 1 million volumes in 1990 but contained only 1.2 million in 2024.

Loyola’s reference collection is something to behold. If you haven’t explored the stacks, I recommend doing so. Seeing all of the volumes side by side, sorted in meticulous fashion, is a phenomenal sight. And this is made possible through the careful and deliberate selection and collection conducted by our invaluable library staff. To simply discard books because they are old is a slap in the face to the students, faculty, researchers, librarians, alumni, and donors who have used and produced this impressive collection throughout the years that Loyola has operated.