The announcement, forwarded to the Tribune by Director of University Communication Brigid O'Brien Miller, said Marquette will continue to fund the program, which had been facing indefinite suspension after efforts to find donors to help cover nearly $225,000 in annual costs fell short.,”The decision to suspend Marquette's Service Learning Program in Cape Town, South Africa has been reversed, according to a university announcement passed on to the Tribune Wednesday night.

The announcement, forwarded to the Tribune by Director of University Communication Brigid O'Brien Miller, said Marquette will continue to fund the program, which had been facing indefinite suspension after efforts to find donors to help cover nearly $225,000 in annual costs fell short.

A joint statement in the announcement by University President the Rev. Robert A. Wild, Provost Madeline Wake and Senior Vice President Greg Kliebhan said that Marquette "will reallocate funds to ensure the continuation of the Cape Town program."

"We are proud that our students so strongly support such programs," the statement said.

Wild said he has received dozens of letters from the program's supporters, and praised their interest in "Marquette's commitment to service learning," according to the announcement.

In an interview Wednesday afternoon, Wake said the "incredible outcry" on campus helped spur the administration to reconsider the suspension.

Wake said she "was very much in favor of this program from the beginning," but did not realize the Marquette community would mobilize so strongly behind it.

"I didn't think I had that many supporters around the university, and that was amazing to me," she said.

She said the reaction to the announcement that the program was to be suspended led to multiple meetings between top university officials about what could be done to avoid such a step.

"People said, 'OK, let's find a way to do this,' " she said.

Wake did not specify where the funds to continue the program will come from, but said it would be "a collaborative effort with the deans and vice presidents taking part in these decisions."

"We're going to take it from other sources," she said. Rather than banking on donations, "it'll be something that is hard money," she said.

Wake also defended herself and other administration officials against assertions that they had not been behind the program, saying she was "extremely distressed" at the prospect of suspending it.

She said she originally dedicated $150,000 per year for three years to the program out of a $500,000 annual start-up fund for new projects, an allocation she called a "very extraordinary" sum.

An article in Tuesday's Tribune reported that during the Sept. 28 Marquette University Student Government meeting, the reading of a letter sent to Wake by the program's current students "elicited thunderous applause from everyone there, except Wake and Kliebhan."

"Greg and I did clap," Wake said, "because those students are outstanding."

"If you go through that program, it is amazing," she said. "They're in the poorest neighborhoods in Cape Town, and they are working with leaders of non-governmental organizations, doing things to really lift people up."

In an e-mail to the Tribune sent Tuesday, Sarah Davies Cordova, the program's resident director and an associate professor of French, said she and the program's current students had "decided not to tell anyone in South Africa about the (Marquette administration's) suspension of the program for the time being."

"We do not want to alarm any of the organizations or persons on whom we rely," she said in the e-mail.

But after a phone call from Wake that came at nearly midnight in Cape Town Wednesday night telling her it would not come to that, Cordova was all smiles.

"I think it's great," she said. "I was very hopeful, because I think the students worked brilliantly hard to make sure something that mattered a lot to them – the program – was reinstated."

Caitlin Madden, a College of Arts & Sciences senior currently studying in Cape Town, said she and the other students in the program had been hopeful, if not optimistic, that the suspension would not stand.

"I think the sense we got was that even though campus was really into it, the decision has been made," she said. "I don't think anyone realized how important this program was to people."

She said the students were prepared to seek help from other sources to save the program.

"I have half of a letter to Oprah on my computer asking for another $200,000 to keep this alive another year," she said. "We thought we were going to have to do things like that."

She also said she was relieved that Marquette would not abandon the service sites tied to the program, many of which depend heavily on student workers.

"They're used to people who come in for a couple of weeks and then leave," she said. "I'm glad Marquette decided not to be one of these organizations."

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