For more than 100 years, the institution we serve has been doing good things.

Birmingham-Southern College has helped to prepare young people for lives of service and meaning. It has educated generations of students who now live and provide leadership in all 67 counties in Alabama. It has served as a critical catalyst in the transformation of lives and families.  And it has provided hundreds of jobs and contributed hundreds of millions of dollars to the economic vitality of Birmingham and the State of Alabama.

Now, for reasons that originated more than a decade ago during a previous administration, all of that is in peril. The Board of Trustees will vote on Wednesday whether to continue the operations of the college beyond the end of the current term.

The hour of decision is close at hand. If BSC can secure adequate one-time bridge funding, everything our college makes possible can continue for decades to come, without any future support from state and local government. If this critical funding is not provided, a century-old pillar of the community will vanish forever.

Several factors weigh in favor of our funding request.

Under the able leadership of President Daniel Coleman, BSC has developed a workable plan to put the college back on a sound financial footing. We have quietly raised nearly $46 million toward an endowment fund goal, and we are on track to raise $200 million by May 2026. Freshman applications are at a six-year high, demonstrating a strong demand for a BSC education.

Fortuitously, the state’s Education Trust Fund currently enjoys a $2.7 billion surplus. Every year, funds from the ETF are appropriated for private schools and other private entities, so support for BSC would not be breaking any precedent or setting any new one. As long as the Legislature determines that such support would be in the public interest, it can provide funding.

We respectfully submit that saving Birmingham-Southern College is overwhelmingly in the public interest.

For starters, by providing $37.5 million in funding, state and local governments can safeguard the nearly $1 billion in direct economic impact BSC will provide over the next 10 years (according to a February study by Dr. Keivan Deravi, the economist the State itself relies on during the budgetary process).

The effects of losing BSC, on the other hand, would be profound. These effects would be felt first and hardest in the adjacent West Birmingham neighborhoods of Bush Hills and College Hills. And by those currently employed in the 1,480 direct and indirect jobs the college sustains.

But the negative effects would not end there.

State government would lose $6.8 million in tax revenue each year and local governments an additional $7 million annually. The brain drain that business leaders have identified as a primary obstacle to their workforce development efforts in the State would accelerate.

Perhaps that is why, in a recent editorial, Neal Wade — one of the state’s leading economic development figure for the last three decades — pointed out that “If Birmingham-Southern College didn’t exist, we would pay millions (in economic incentives) to bring it to Alabama.”

If we (rightly) provide incentives stretching over years to bring new businesses to our state, should we not spend a mere fraction of those amounts in one-time assistance for an institution that has meant so much to Birmingham and the State? We believe the answer is a resounding, “Yes,” and we are not alone in that belief.

Since announcing in December our plan to return to financial resiliency, Birmingham-Southern has enjoyed an outpouring of support, assistance, and encouragement from thousands of individuals who rallied to our side. Many, of course, are alumni, but many never attended college on the Hilltop.

Students wrote nearly 500 letters and postcards to Gov. Kay Ivey and legislators. Alumni hosted their own letter-writing meetups around the state. In February, nearly 700 people packed the house at a Town Hall hosted by State Rep. Juandalynn Givan. On the opening day of the legislative session, 100 students, faculty, staff, and alumni participated in a prayer gathering on campus.

On #BSCForward Day, parents, students, faculty, staff, alumni and supporters posted hundreds of times to social media, sharing what BSC has meant to them. And when Congresswoman Terri Sewell visited our campus to present a federal check for student interns, she expressed strong support for public investment in the college.

A whole host of supporters have submitted guest opinion columns to newspapers and magazines, spelling out the many reasons support for BSC would be a good investment of public funds — from community leaders in Bush Hills, to a former bureau chief for the Associated Press, to a professor at Harvard Medical School who credits BSC as a major factor in his success as a physician.

Through it all, our remarkable faculty and staff have worked tirelessly to ensure that this Spring term is no different from any other so that our current students can enjoy the BSC experience they deserve.

To all who joined with us in common cause, we simply cannot thank you enough for your support. Nor can we adequately convey our gratitude to our legislative champions, State Senators Jabo Waggoner and Rodger Smitherman, who are working hard, as we write this, to convey to their colleagues the critical importance of saving Birmingham-Southern.

Yet, even as we say thank you, we must call upon you once again for your help.

If you haven’t contacted your state legislators in both the House and Senate, please do so today, Friday, and Monday as they return from a week’s recess. If you have already contacted them, it can’t hurt to reach out to them again and remind them of the $97.2 million in direct economic impact every year that will be lost if we lose BSC. Tell them you support one-time bridge funding that can help restore BSC to financial health and ask them to do the same. We don’t need to focus on the details of other projects in the proposed budget; we can emphasize the value of BSC as a worthy investment for Alabama.

With their help and yours, Birmingham-Southern College can continue to do good things for Alabamians, and we can say, once again, in the words of our alma mater, “Forward, Ever.”

 

Rev. Keith Thompson, ‘83

Chair, Birmingham-Southern College Board of Trustees

 

Joelle James Phillips, ‘89

Vice Chair, Birmingham-Southern College Board of Trustees

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