Trinity College has lost an estimated $200,000 in donations and 16 incoming students in connection with the national uproar following controversial Facebook posts of longtime sociology professor Johnny Eric Williams.
Williams, who is on leave until January, was cleared by the school in a July 14 report, after he posted racially charged comments on Facebook, which were eventually featured on the conservative online publication Campus Reform. The post discussed the shooting earlier this summer of Congressional Republicans practicing for a charity baseball game, using the hashtag “Let Them [Expletive] Die.” Once the essay went viral, Williams faced death threats and Trinity’s campus shut down for a day.
On Monday, college President Joanne Berger-Sweeney published an online letter to the campus community updating them on the situation, and to put the losses in context.
Despite an unspecified number of past donors choosing not to contribute this year because of the firestorm that drew national attention to the college, the president said overall giving exceeded $28.6 million, which was a 28 percent increase over the previous year.
She also noted that while the students changing their minds cited the incident as a reason for withdrawing, the small number is within the “usual” number of students annually altering their initial decisions to matriculate. She says enrollment is ahead of last year’s figures at this time.
The college also incurred some unspecified costs for increasing campus security for a time, she said.
“We can and will recover from the financial cost of this incident; the work before us now is to heal as a community,” Berger-Sweeney said. “This incident will not divide us. … We continue to provide space for civilized discourse about issues that divide us.”
She was not available for further comment.
