OT - Demise of Marquette's Freshman Frontier Program??

[CaribouJim]

Anybody hear about the alleged demise of the Freshman Frontier Program (aka FFP) at MU???

I have a brunch of friends who went through in addition to a niece and a nephew.

Seems like a really good program - my niece has some health issues and they were great in guiding her through her 4 years - getting classes at certain times of day due to meds etc. The people there seem like angels - at least the ones that I have met.

$$ situation or what?? Hope they have a good reason.

[Tmreddevil]

What I have heard through the grapevine:

-Any $s donated to it are being rerouted to other funds
-The program will still technically exist, but it will not there to help "less qualified" students adjust to school. It will be a purely optional program for anyone who gets in.
-According to my brother, it will basically raise the admittance standard for the school

I have known many success stories to come through the program, if they are gutting it to raise standards, I definitely have mixed feelings about it.

[TheSultan]

What I have heard through the grapevine:

-Any $s donated to it are being rerouted to other funds

That's illegal. It is literally against state law to use money donated for one purpose to be used for another. (Rarely enforced.) My guess is that is that they are asking donors to redirect donations elsewhere or simply not accepting donations of that sort.

[Tmreddevil]

That's illegal. It is literally against state law to use money donated for one purpose to be used for another. (Rarely enforced.) My guess is that is that they are asking donors to redirect donations elsewhere or simply not accepting donations of that sort.

Honest question...if the school shuts a program down, it can't touch donations allocated to that program? It has to refund the donation or something?

As I mentioned, my info is second or third hand, so the details are not necessarily 100% accurate. I just related the gist of the information I heard.

[TheSultan]

If they shut down a program, they can likely use it for a related purpose. If they are simply making modifications to the program and changing the name, that would not be an issue.

For instance, when the University merged its College of Journalism into the current what is now the Diederich College of Communications, they could use those funds for the operations of the college regardless if they specifically supported Journalism. Does this make sense?

[Tmreddevil]

Yep, thanks.

[mutpm]

That's illegal. It is literally against state law to use money donated for one purpose to be used for another. (Rarely enforced.) My guess is that is that they are asking donors to redirect donations elsewhere or simply not accepting donations of that sort.

The program will still exist. It just sounds like the admission standards are changing. If so, they will still need the money.