Clear communication is difficult to find in many parts of life right now, and the WashU administration’s lack of transparent and thoughtful engagement with student concerns is a wonderful example. The 2024 State of the University address was released in early March, pairing nicely with StudLife’s interview with Chancellor Martin that was published beforehand. These two touchstones for communication are purported to provide the student body with a source of annual communication and reflection from the perspective of the Chancellor. As such, it is worthwhile to take some time to reflect on these reflections themselves — to assess the State of the State of the University, which continues not to give students the quality of discourse they deserve. 

This year, the State of the University address was 22 minutes and 48 seconds long — a 141-second increase from 2023. Despite its length, the 2024 address contained, in my count, zero jokes. In 2023, Martin was able to include two jokes in his address, so it was disappointing that he refrained entirely from chuckling this year.

Another loss in this year’s address is Martin’s exquisite taste in neckties. While 2024’s red, white, and black tie is not visually unpleasant by any means, the shift from the lively red and green from 2023 was representative of Martin’s more serious and corporate tone this year. 

The annual address always has some focus on the current political and social climate on campus, and last year the College Republicans’ invitation to Amala Ekpunobi to speak at a campus event was a primary factor in that climate. Ekpunobi is a prominent political pundit at PragerU, a conservative media non-profit that packages its talking points into short-form videos. In the context of continued controversy around the platforming of figures like Ekpunobi on campus, especially in light of her deeply transphobic rhetoric, Chancellor Martin spoke in the 2023 address on the need to be occasionally offended:

“Does this mean you and I will be offended sometimes by the words or expression of ideas of our peers, our students, or our professors? It sure does…and we all need to learn when and how to productively respond.”

This year, Martin instead opted for a monologue on respectful debate and freedom of inquiry, during which the camera cautiously zoomed forward.

This dramatic shot allowed Martin to explain that the University is “…unequivocal in communicating our expectation of respectful treatment of others and physical safety for all members of our community.” It is unclear to me where this communication was in December of 2022, when many students expressed their view that Amala Ekpunobi’s invitation to campus created an unsafe environment that did anything but respect the existence and dignity of trans students.

The rest of 2024’s address was filled with student and faculty blurbs, clips from WashU’s stock footage folder labeled “diverse group of people laughing while in conversation,” and plenty of shoutouts for long-term financial projects. A large chunk of the video was dedicated to a checklist of name drops — new administrators, significant donors, and new business partners.

Based on the past two addresses, the purpose of the State of the University video seems to be quite unrelated to the pursuit of clear communication with the student body. While there are certainly some aspects of both the 2023 and 2024 addresses that are particularly relevant to students — clarification about the University’s position on free speech and discourse, for example — the State of the University address ultimately feels like an advertisement for two main groups: prospective students and donors. Some stats, drone shots of new buildings, and a snazzy tie are surely enough to make anyone immediately fall in love with the administration’s depiction of WashU.

The confusion persists, then, of where the current student body can look for a dialogue with the administration. Martin’s 2023 address included an explicit call for viewers to submit questions, which “may” be responded to in a follow-up video. That video has not yet been released, and that invitation for questions was entirely absent in this year’s address.

This year’s StudLife Q&A with the Chancellor was published on March 6, and it covered plenty of important issues for current students. The most prominent of these issues were tuition increases and divestment, in the context of both fossil fuels and Boeing’s weapons sales.

Martin was quite forward with his explanation of why the University is not particularly interested in divesting from fossil fuels, or even in looking at the ESG ratings of their investments for their endowment: “We’ve made the decision that the purpose of the endowment is to generate as much money as possible.” Confusingly, this claim was followed immediately by an explanation that “[The University] does so in a socially responsible way.” Based on the current makeup of WashU investments, this is a classic having-cake-and-also-eating-it situation. Martin directed StudLife to consult the annual report on the endowment website, which outlines the minority percentage of the endowment directed towards “positive impact” — the details of WashU’s investment in new renewable energy remains obscured to the public. 

In October 2023, Green Action WashU estimated fossil-fuel investments of $625 million based on the 2021-22 Endowment Annual Report. Unfortunately for the “making as much money as possible” strategy, the endowment has also depreciated in value for two consecutive years. This point has been made extensively by other students and organizations like Green Action WashU. Whatever the administration’s ultimate decision is, it remains deeply disappointing that the administration is unwilling to answer these concerns directly. Instead, simply proclaiming a commitment to social responsibility is assumed to be enough of a response. 

The interview moved on to the topic of tuition, whose 4.5% increase announced in February marks the largest tuition increase in the past decade. Martin cited a variety of factors as the reason for the increase, but when pressed about the relative size of this increase to others in recent years he used only one word: “inflation.” Luckily, it seems that the Chancellor sees this increase as a merciful manifestation of what could have been much worse: when StudLife pointed out that inflation dropped drastically this year from its previous 8% in 2022, Martin made sure to remind the interviewer that “…when inflation was 8%, we didn’t increase tuition 8%.” How kind of them! 

Martin neglected to acknowledge that a major reason for inflation in recent years has been the immense greed of fossil-fuel companies that want to squeeze energy consumers for everything they have — fossil-fuel companies that remain major targets of WashU’s investments. Major investment firms BlackRock and Meketa have both independently claimed that investment funds are most likely to either remain neutral or experience positive gains when switching from fossil fuels to green energy, so perhaps some of the endowment’s recent struggles could have been alleviated by more socially conscious investment. Of course, this point has been made many times over by many students and organizations on campus; the administration refuses to engage it in good faith.

Thankfully, Martin could provide an extremely transparent and thought-out answer to StudLife’s questions about Resist WashU’s advocacy for the University’s divestment from Boeing — a move now supported by many other student groups and a recently-passed SU Senate resolution. When asked if such a divestment would ever happen, the Chancellor answered “No,” and when asked if he wanted to elaborate on the reasons for that position, he answered “No.”

Direct and transparent information is an extremely low bar of communication to expect as a student body. And yet the University seems satisfied with an email every month or so, paired with an annual promotional “address” and an interview with StudLife that gets treated with half-answers and diplomatic word salad.

The Chancellor concluded his 2023 State of the University address with a heartwarming send-off: “I hope today that you’ve learned some things that make you proud or got you thinking about your role in fulfilling our WashU mission.”

To the administration: I hope today you’ve learned some things that made you pause or got you thinking about your communication with the student body.

Editor’s Note: This article was updated on 3/26/24 to fix an incorrect link.