The 7Cs Claremont Colleges Chaplaincy Advisory Board, also known as the Committee on Religious Affairs (CORA), sent a statement to the 7Cs President’s Council on Sunday, Feb. 16, to speak out about their concerns over the proposed termination of the Catholic chaplaincy by the Claremont Colleges Services (TCCS).
TCCS has begun collecting input from student governments, hosting listening sessions with faculty and staff and meeting with the Catholic Student Association. They aim to gather feedback by the end of February, craft a proposal for 7C presidents by March and begin a search to fill the vacancy by April, with the Chaplain hired by summer.
According to CORA’s statement, by beginning this process without consulting the Chaplaincy Advisory Board or conducting another review of the chaplaincy, as was done in 2015, the vice president of student affairs at TCCS, Dr. Stephanie Blaisdell bypassed precedent.
“CORA was established by Dr. Blaisdell’s predecessor, Janet Smith Dickerson, and approved by the 7C President’s Council to serve an advisory role for all major issues regarding the chaplaincy,” CORA faculty said in their statement. “CORA has served in an advisory capacity for more than 45 years and her course of action undermines our confidence in her leadership.”
The Catholic chaplain position is currently vacant after Father Joe Fenton announced his retirement in October of last year. But CORA said that Fenton’s retirement was not as cut-and-dry as TCCS made it out to be.
“Father Joe Fenton was terminated without any formal announcement, explanation, or consultation with the CORA Chaplaincy Advisory Board,” CORA wrote. “While Dr. Blaisdell announced to the 7Cs community that he ‘retired,’ Father Fenton stated that she told him on October 2, 2024, that he was ‘terminated’ and to this day she has never told him why he was terminated.”
Fenton attended a recent CORA meeting and shared how his termination was spun into a retirement, according to Pomona Chair of the Faculty and Professor of Medieval Studies Kenneth Wolf.
He said that Fenton’s final paycheck is being withheld by TCCS — which includes vacation time accrued — until he agrees to sign a document saying that he will not discuss his termination openly.
“I know how history works, and there’s two sides to every story,” Wolf said in an interview with TSL. “I just wish he had been given a better exit so that he doesn’t have this bad taste in his mouth at the end of so many years of service.”
Blaisdell allegedly told faculty she will not be moving forward with a review of the chaplaincy.
“The problem is really a jurisdictional one, that the VP of student services would decide to do something like this without having a full, ten-year review,” Professor Wolf said in the interview. “We’re due for another one, where they could get all the stakeholders, not just go door-to-door and ask people: ‘Well, which chaplain would you like?’”
He emphasized, however, that a review does not guarantee any measures. For instance, the 2015 review — which included fourteen people encompassing student deans, CORA members, students and staff — said the chaplains needed more money and less oversight by the deans and more by the presidents.
“Neither one of those things happened; that’s why we have this problem,” Wolf said.
The Claremont Chaplaincy was established in 1949. In the early 1970s, the chaplains reported directly to the then-6C presidents. In 2001, the TCCS restructured itself, and the chaplaincy began reporting to the vice president of student services.
“The problem is the chaplaincy began as not a student service, but as a chaplaincy,” Wolf said in the interview. “[It] then was folded bureaucratically under the student services branch of the college, rather than the president.”
Because of this change, Professor Wolf said that he finds the Chaplain’s Office to be inhibited from serving the 7C population. He cited the chaplains’ inability to speak to student reporters without getting permission from TCCS and the “muted” response after Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel as examples of its current ineffective structure.
“The chaplaincy, from a CORA perspective, should be the conscience of the colleges,” Wolf said. “I imagine a free chaplaincy being able to sit down and say: ‘What should we do as a chaplaincy in the face of this?’ But instead, there are restrictions on what they can do.”
Wolf added that if TCCS was “truly operating in good faith,” they would have approached CORA immediately with the possibility of not replacing the Catholic chaplain with another Catholic chaplain; he said that there is a “constitutional crisis” within the chaplaincy that is of utmost concern to him.
“If Stephanie had met with CORA, the 7C Committee of Religious Affairs, before setting out on this path, she would have seen how her approach is, in a very real sense, unconstitutional,” Wolf said in a “report out” email to Pomona faculty on Monday, Feb. 17, which he forwarded to TSL. “At the very least, it flies in the face of process and precedent.”
Apart from the current constitution of the chaplaincy, other professors have raised concerns about the proposed combination of the Protestant and Catholic chaplaincies into a “Christian chaplaincy.”
When asked about possible next steps, Wolf said another review must be done of the chaplaincy, similar to the one he led in 2015, from which a Muslim Imam was added to the Chaplains Office.
CORA has received a default response from the 7Cs Presidents Council regarding their statement, specifically from Scripps College President Amy Marcus-Newhall, who spoke on behalf of the council.
“She acknowledged receiving the letter, and that’s about all she did,” Wolf said. “It wouldn’t be typical for a president to tip their hand: They take that information and decide. I’m just hoping that it’s not something they leave to the deans of students and let them decide, because I think then there’ll be some repercussions.”
Ultimately, CORA staff called on the 7C presidents to give Fenton a “proper retirement ceremony.” They further requested that presidents issue a statement that the Catholic chaplaincy will not be terminated and conduct another official review in coordination with the Chaplaincy Advisory Board to “assess the current needs” of the chaplaincy and 7C community.
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