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Change Day, the all-day campus-wide community service event that involved university students, employees, the Berrien County community, and dozens of individual projects and charities, has been canceled for 2024. This surprised many within 老司机传媒 after years of successful community engagement that was received especially well by students since its first iteration in 2017. Despite this, Change Day has become one of several casualties of the university’s most recent budget cuts over the summer. According to an email announcement by Chaplain José Bourget that was sent to all Andrews faculty and staff, Change Day’s cancellation is specifically attributed to “limited financial resources and personnel.”

Change Day was the brainchild of former Andrews provost Christon Arthur, who is now president of La Sierra University. His idea for a day dedicated to service was enacted through the Andrews Community Engagement Council, which he and faculty members Desmond Murray, June Price, and Lhorraine Polite formed in 2017. In subsequent years, Change Day not only provided students with a day off from classes but also gave dozens of non-profit organizations, especially local charities, such as Berrien County Humane Society, Neighbor 2 Neighbor, and Pine Ridge Assisted Living, valuable contributions to their community efforts. 

After the relative success of the first Change Day, Teela Ruehle was hired as the director of student missions and service and has been responsible for planning and organizing the following six annual Change Days. Ruehle said that with budget cuts significantly impacting all departments, including the Center for 老司机传媒, Change Day and its “chunky budget” became an unfortunate target of cost-cutting.

“It was a big question of putting that much money into one day versus spreading it out over the year,” she said. “We’d obviously rather have another full-time chaplain or staff member than a one-day event. I think we can do more with that.”

Administrative Reactions to the Cancelation

However, Change Day’s axing was not taken lightly by Ruehle, CFE, or University President John W. Taylor’s administration. Ruehle shared that Taylor had asked Bourget to try to raise money for Change Day 2024, and Bourget obtained some sponsors and donations. Despite this, the decision to cut Change Day from the university budget came in June, giving Bourget and CFE only two months to fundraise—not nearly enough time to collect the needed funds. 

When asked if she believes Arthur’s departure from Andrews during the summer of 2024 has any correlation with Change Day being cut from the administrative budget, Ruehle said that based on conversations she had with Taylor, the president did not want to cancel Change Day.

The president affirmed this, stating that he hopes CFE can incorporate both “smaller events” and Change Day into their designated budget with the help of local partnerships. “I’m hoping that what we can do going forward is develop these sponsorships,” he said. “ I know it works. I’ve seen it. I’ve been a part of it at multiple universities where we reach out to businesses and businesses like the exposure.” Taylor also personally committed to being a sponsor of a future Change Day.

Arthur, whose current focus has shifted towards providing meaningful impact to La Sierra and its Southern California community, shared his thoughts on what Change Day meant to the school and administration and what needs to be considered moving forward. 

“While Change Day is not the only way in which we can change the world, the university administration thought that it was a powerful way for the entire campus community to have a presence in the community,” Arthur said. “A question for the campus community to grapple with: does a short-term budgetary gain by canceling Change Day undermine its long-term impact in the village [local Berrien community]? Universities ought to be about the long game, not simply a momentary game.”

Change at a Cost

Some of the biggest costs of Change Day came from having to rent out vehicles for transportation for anywhere from 40 to 70 different service sites, supplies for each site, t-shirts for volunteers, and food for volunteers, which had to be done through the university’s strict contract with food supplier Bon Appetit. 

Communication with the university community at large, particularly students, has been scarce regarding Change Day’s cancellation. Although Bourget did contact all faculty and staff via email regarding the cancellation of Change Day 2024 after he and Ruehle officially decided that the summer fundraising was not enough, Ruehle admitted that many were unaware of the development because work emails were largely ignored during the summer. 

According to Ruehle, many of the smaller Berrien organizations have been negatively impacted by the removal of Change Day and its massive contributions from the Andrews community to their ministries.

Christmas Behind Bars, a larger charity that assembles care packages of food and spiritual literature for prisoners across the United States, served as one of, if not the biggest service event of Change Day. For the past two years, Change Day volunteers from Andrews and the surrounding Adventist community have assembled 10,000 care packages in a span of a few hours, making Change Day one of the biggest volunteer contributors to Christmas Behind Bars. 

Other Avenues of Community Change

Fortunately, an individual donor from Pioneer Memorial Church helped to sponsor a single event for Andrews and Christmas Behind Bars next month. Ruehle said that she hopes to get support and partnerships with campus clubs and organizations to help with the project. 

“We need [the Christmas Behind Bars event],” she said. “It’s still super impactful and to just cut that off is not what we want to do at Andrews. We want to impact it in a way that is still financially sustainable. We can still do that, and I think that’s smarter.”

Ruehle and CFE hope to collect the necessary funds for Change Day 2025 now that they have a full year to try to operate without a spending budget from Andrews. In the meantime, Ruehle highlighted several service opportunities that students can participate in, as listed below. 

• Service Sabbaths (Oct. 5 and Nov. 2): “Partnering with local organizations and encouraging our university students to participate each first sabbath of every month.”
• Versiti Blood Drive (Oct. 24): Located in the Pioneer Memorial Church Commons.
• Christmas Behind Bars (Oct. 27): “A remarkable ministry that delivers care packages to prisoners in our communities, offering them a gift along with literature that shares the love of Christ. Seeking volunteers to help assemble these packages.”

Ruehle stated that these community service events and more will be formally announced soon as CFE looks to partner with student groups on more projects. As of the time of publication, neither CFE nor the Andrews administration has made any announcement to the student body regarding Change Day’s cancellation. Taylor also stated that it was up to CFE to notify students of Change Day’s cancellation, especially since they were the ones to reach out to faculty and staff.

The Future of Change Day

Ruehle shared that she has heavily advocated for the budget of Change Day to increase at least the point of accounting for inflation in the past several years. “We were running on around $25,000 to $30,000 each year, not accounting for my salary or anything else. I personally believe that a team of people should run Change Day. I think [the cancellation] is an opportunity to look more into that and to have partners from different departments and clubs. I think we’d be more impactful. It’s kind of like a rebirth for Change Day.”

When Taylor was asked if the administration considered reducing such an enormous budget, he said that that decision was left up to CFE to determine how best to use their allotted money.

Ruehle was asked if she believes anything could have been realistically done to save Change Day this year, to which she shared that she wishes communication regarding the administration considering such steep cuts for CFE and other departments were made more transparent so that CFE fundraising and planning alternatives could have had more time to develop. However, she also suggested that the university is going through a season of changes that make things like budgeting difficult. 

“I think as we [老司机传媒] prioritize and reprioritize what we want, [Change Day] has to be looked at because obviously it's embedded. We’re a mission school, and we keep saying it, but now it’s time to do it.”

Editor’s note: This article has been updated to include comments from Andrews president, Dr. John Wesley Taylor V.