Marquette's Service Learning Program in Cape Town, South Africa, will be suspended indefinitely following the spring 2007 semester due to a lack of funding, according to a university decision handed down to the program's administrators last week.

The decision provoked an outcry from students and staff involved in the program, who said the move will sully the university's relationship with Cape Town and scrambled to find ways to remedy the situation.

Brigid O'Brien Miller, director of university communication, said the decision was made by Provost Madeline Wake. College of Arts & Sciences Dean Michael McKinney and other administrators were also consulted, she said.

Miller said the two-year-old program has been funded to date through the provost's office and the College of Arts & Sciences with the understanding that additional funding from donors would be sought to make the program sustainable.

But efforts to secure such funding were unsuccessful, she said.

"Although the program will be suspended next year, various departments within the university will continue to work to ensure the long-term future of the program through fund raising, grant-seeking and continued contact with the Desmond Tutu Peace Centre," she said in an e-mail, citing ongoing efforts to find donors and proposals being prepared by former and current students in the program.

She said the College of Professional Studies will continue its affiliation with the Centre, including speaker exchanges.

The Centre, funded and run by the Desmond Tutu Peace Foundation, works with Marquette and other groups "to nurture peace by promoting ethical, visionary, and values-based human development" in South Africa, according to the organization's Web site.

An unexpected blow

Judy Mayotte, a board member of the foundation who conceived and helped found the program, said news of the suspension came abruptly and without warning.

She said she received an e-mail last week saying the program would be suspended, and that Sarah Davies Cordova, the program's resident director, got a phone call saying the program was closing down.

Cordova, an associate professor of French who has been in Cape Town since May 2005, said she knew funding was an ongoing issue for the programbut did not expect the program to be suspended so soon or without further consideration.

Mayotte said neither she nor Cordova was consulted on the decision.

"There was no discussion as

to what might be done," she

said. "It just simply was announced."

Cordova said students split their time between the classroom and service sites, where they spend two days a week.

Sites range from homes for abused women and children to reading programs to arts and crafts centers for people with HIV and AIDS, she said.

Mayotte accompanied the first group of students to Cape Town in February 2005, and three groups have followed since then, according to Cordova.

Both Mayotte and Cordova said the program was initially funded through June 2007 and included a fundraising mandate to raise money for additional semesters.

Mayotte praised Wake's support of the program, and said she believes the problem stemmed from the way the fundraising mandate was handled.

"That mandate, I believe, was ignored," she said.

Students 'devastated'

In a letter to Wake written in light of the program's suspension, the twelve students currently in Cape Town said they were "devastated by this seemingly abrupt conclusion" to the program, and frustrated that they had been given no opportunity for input.

The students said the service sites at which they work — many of which cannot afford to hire outside help — have come to depend on the program's volunteers and would suffer greatly in their absence.

A sudden end to the program would also result in "burned bridges between Marquette and the Cape Town community," they said.

The students also lamented the timing of the suspension, which came days after a Chicago Tribune feature on Mayotte's life work and noted Marquette's program.

The students said they did not understand how funding for the program was allowed to run dry. They expressed skepticism that the program would ever be restarted if suspended for any length of time, and offered to do whatever they could to save the program.

"We are prepared to do everything in our power to give other students the opportunities we have had, and to continue Marquette's work with the community of Cape Town," they said.

Jason Rae, an MUSG senator for the College of Arts & Sciences, said he is in the early stages of drafting legislation that would recommend the program be reinstated.

Rae said he learned of the suspension Thursday, when he and other students who had expressed interest in studying in South Africa received e-mails informing them of the university's decision.

'Disappointed once more'

Kathleen Ainge, a College of Arts & Sciences junior who is studying in Cape Town this semester, said even a temporary suspension would jeopardize the relationships Marquette has established in South Africa.

"Even if the program re-opens in a few years we will have broken the trust of so many people," she said in an e-mail.

"We didn't come here to 'help' and then leave," she said. "To leave now is to give the impression that we don't care."

Mayotte echoed this sentiment, saying a disruption of the program would cost Marquette "tremendous credibility in the Cape Town community."

She said Marquette's withdrawal from South Africa would be another setback for a country that has known more than its share of letdowns.

"I have seen how people (in Cape Town) have had their dreams crushed repeatedly," she said.A