During the second media session of the 2024-2025 academic year with WGRE, D3 Network and The DePauw on Feb. 7, featuring Board of Trustees Chairman Doug Smith and President Lori White, they spoke on the current political climate surrounding immigration.
As President Trump pushes mandates for mass deportations and ending birthright citizenship for children whose parents did not enter the country legally, students at DePauw grow worried, wondering what DePauw’s plans are to address these concerns.
“If somebody calls on the phone to ask information about any one of you [students], we are not allowed to give that out. Even if law enforcement comes on campus for any purpose, let’s say a student may have been arrested somewhere and they want to come on campus, they have to have proper credentials and have to show those credentials to two designated officers on campus–the police chief and Dionne Jackson,” President White said. Jackson is DePauw's Vice President of Institutional Equity.
According to privacy regulations, specifically FERPA, the University is not permitted to share information about students or respective families to external parties such as US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
As of Feb. 13, DePauw has not made any public statements, held a formal conversation or extended resources publicly to students about how to navigate these uncertain times.
“I would not want to confirm that we have any students who are undocumented on campus. I do not want any student to have a target on their back for any reason, so you know it well could be we have undocumented students on campus. I don’t have that information,” President White said.
Chairmen Smith had no comment.
At the first media session, President White was made aware of a concern with 911 calls made from campus. Currently, if someone were to make an emergency call it would not distinguish the specific location of that call. The call reader only reads ‘DePauw University.’
Since then, President White has spoken with Vice President for Business and Finance, Andrea Young and discovered that this is a problem with DePauw’s technical infrastructure.
“That’s certainly on the list for us to improve and the police station is well aware of this and the reminder to just have students, when they call, to provide as much description as they can about where they are to make sure that the police can respond immediately and effectively,” President White said.
Earlier this month, President White and Chairmen Smith attended the annual winter retreat with the Board of Trustees where they discussed fundraising campaigns, one of them being for student housing. Chairman Smith has met with architects and they will share their recommendations for renovations and updating student housing at the upcoming general assembly meeting.
Discussing the relocation of Ashley Square Cinema as part of the “Growing Green and Gold” project’s residential housing initiative, Chairman Smith said that they hoped to have an announcement by the end of the Spring 2025 semester as to where the new cinema will be. “I can't promise that because we don't control that process and we're not moving the cinema before the end of the semester, but, hopefully, before the end of the semester, we will have identified where the cinema will go, once we start developing the new housing project,” he said.
Regarding the Class of 2029 admissions, President White said: “We have room at the Inn for all bright talented students whom we think could be successful here at DePauw, and we are going to always do our best to convince those students that DePauw is the place that they should say yes to.” She and Chairman Smith did not specify the goal number of admissions for the new class.