Julia Jensen: Hello everyone, and welcome back to Demise Of The Crown. This week, our final ride, we are making three stops. We are going to hear about the days after the semester ended, specifically with the college’s accreditation situation. We are going to talk to some students about how they dealt with this grief in this Christian environment, and what these past months—years—have made Colby and I think about our relationship with King’s. And then…we get answers. That’s all in a minute.

Colby McCaskill: But, for the last time, we need to remind you of the inadequacy of this story. We cannot, no matter how much we want to, impart the life experience we lived in the short amount of time we have. If you would like to know more about the situations and stories we mention here, you can find links to those in the show description and transcripts.

Julia Jensen: Okay. I forgot to mention, before we get to those three acts, Colby wants to tell you a little story about art.

Colby McCaskill: Over Winter Break, this past December, I picked up a novella anthology at a bookstore downtown. It was more than I wanted to spend, but I needed something to read. It’s a few short stories by an old Austrian writer named Stefan Zweig. Actually, later when researching for this project, I looked him up, and while he’s relatively unknown, he has been pretty influential. Wes Anderson has credited him as the inspiration behind his blockbuster: The Grand Budapest Hotel. There was a german director just a few years ago who made a movie based on his short story about chess. But the story I want to talk about to open our show this week is called The Invisible Collection.

It’s told—he does this a lot—through multiple layers of storytelling. The narrator tells you the story that someone else told them. I guess, in this case, with me telling you, we’re another layer deep. Anyway, the story is about an art collector during the hyperinflation of post World War I Germany. He needs art to sell, so he checks his records to see if there are any previous customers willing to part with theirs. He makes the trip to this one man’s, but it turns out that he is blind and his family has secretly sold his whole collection to pay for food and the like. The man hasn’t noticed, because the mother and daughter who pulled the switch did it over a long period of time, and replaced each print with a similar piece of blank paper. What amounts to a simple worthless stack, to the blind collector is a carefully curated collection. You get it? An invisible collection. After being informed of the situation by the family, the art dealer swears to keep the secret and not reveal the invisibility of the collection to it’s owner, lest he break his poor old heart. As a result, what follows is, what I think, an incredibly vivid analogy of our present circumstance. Here, let me read it to you.

“Piles of portfolios were arranged on the table, waiting for us, and as soon as the blind man felt my hand he took my arm, without further greeting, and pressed me down into an armchair.

“ ‘There, now let’s begin at once—there’s a great deal to see, and I know you gentlemen from Berlin never have much time. The first portfolio is devoted to that great master Dürer [Doorah] and, as you’ll see for yourself, pretty well complete—each of my prints finer than the last. Well, you can judge for yourself, look at this one!’ he said, opening the portfolio at the first sheet it contained. ‘There—the Great Horse!’

“And now, with the tender caution one would employ in handling something fragile, his fingertips touching it very lightly to avoid wear and tear, he took out of the folio a mount framing a blank, yellowed sheet of paper, and held the worthless scrap out in front of him with enthusiasm. He looked at it for several minutes, without of course really seeing it, but in his outstretched hand he held the empty sheet up level with his eyes, his expression ecstatic, his whole face magically expressing the intent gesture of a man looking at a fine work. And as his dead pupils stared at it—was it a reflection from the paper, or a glow coming from within him?—a knowledgeable light came into his eyes, a brightness borrowed from what he thought he saw.

“ ‘There,’ he said proudly, ‘did you ever see a finer print? Every detail stands out so sharp and clear—I’ve looked at it beside the Dresden copy, which was flat and lifeless by comparison. And as for its provenance! There—’ and he turned the sheet over and pointed to certain places on the back, which was also blank, so that I instinctively looked at it as if the marks he imagined were really there after all—’there you see the stamp of the Nagler collection, here the stamps of Remy and Esdaile; I dare say the illustrious collectors who owned this print before me never guessed that it would end up in this little room some day.’

“A cold shudder ran down my back as the old man, knowing nothing of what had happened, praised an entirely blank sheet of paper to the skies; and it was a strange sight to see him pointing his finger, knowing the right places to the millimetre, to where the invisible collectors’ stamps that existed only in his imagination would have been. My throat constricted with the horror of it, and I didn’t know what to say; but when, in my confusion, I looked at his wife and daughter I saw the old woman’s hands raised pleadingly to me again, as she trembled with emotion. At this I got a grip on myself and began to play my part.

“ ‘Extraordinary!’ I finally stammered. ‘A wonderful print.’ And at once his entire face glowed with pride. ‘But that’s nothing to all I still have to show you,’ he said triumphantly. ‘You must see my copy of the Melancholia, or the Passion—there, this one is an illuminated copy, you won’t see such quality in one of those again. Look at this’—and again his fingers tenderly moved over an imaginary picture—’that freshness, that warm, grainy tone. All the fine dealers in Berlin, and the doctors who run the museums there, they’d be bowled over.’

“And so that headlong, eloquent recital of his triumphs went on for another good two hours. I can’t say how eerie it was to join him in looking at a hundred, maybe two hundred blank sheets of paper or poor reproductions, but in the memory of this man, who was tragically unaware of their absence, the prints were so incredibly real that he could describe and praise every one of them unerringly, in precise detail, just as he remembered the order of them: the invisible collection that in reality must now be dispersed to all four corners of the earth was still genuinely present to the blind man, so touchingly deceived, and his passion for what he saw was so overwhelming that even I almost began to believe in it.”

Julia Jensen: Look, we’ve come to our final episode, and with our story coming to a close, we feel the need to preface our conclusion with the same truth that our friend the art dealer learned by studying blank sheets of paper.

Colby McCaskill: This is the final episode of our show, but this little picture of King’s that we’ve been trying to describe to you for the past seven, that, for a lot of people, is also ending. 

Julia Jensen: To our eyes, it’s a full color image. But most likely for yours, it’s no more than a blank sheet. A nice story, told by people who experienced it, but can never fully share it. 

Colby McCaskill: I’ve lent this book, this particular story to a few other friends, and the question I always ask after they’ve read it is: What happened to his collection? I’ve gotten different responses based on how literal they decide to be, but I propose that he, our old friend the collector, never lost his collection. Maybe this is too philosophical for some, and I imagine any King’s student who hears this would immediately like to debate me on this topic. But I think as soon as his sight went, the collection immediately went from physical, to internal. It was his collection, all of a sudden. Sure, he wasn't aware that the paintings and prints were dispersed to pay the bills. But still, it was so very real to him. 

Julia Jensen: So, in these next moments if grief or sorrow overtakes us, maybe a little consolation is that you can still share your experience at King’s. Perhaps, without the physical location, it’s harder. But that doesn’t mean your experience there is all of a sudden wiped from this earth. There is room to grieve what now is no more. 

Colby McCaskill: King’s can still be here. I’m pointing to my heart. Radio feels so silly. Alright, with that, stand clear of the closing doors please. Please enjoy episode 8: Plummet. From the Empire State Tribune and the Broadway & Exchange podcast, I’m Colby McCaskill.

Julia Jensen: I’m Julia Jensen, and this is Demise Of The Crown. 

Julia Jensen: As you know from Episode 6, King’s held its graduation ceremony in May. And half its students walked — either graduating on the spot or preemptively before finishing their degree over the summer. I’m sorry to say, but the ambiguity over the future of King’s was not resolved shortly after. There were rumors that we might get an answer after graduation had occurred. But no. Actually, the new Board of Trustees, told the student body in an email that they were still trying to stay open for the fall. They also settled on a deadline. And, in the email, they finally spilled the beans on how much money the college needed for the next semester. 

Colby McCaskill: You heard Henry Moriello mention that deadline at Commencement. 

Henry Moriello: The Board of Trustees has selected meeting on May 31 as the date by which we need to raise sufficient funds through exploring numerous other strategic alliances and fundraising opportunities in order for us to continue operations in ‘23-’24. 

Colby McCaskill: The announcement read that, quote “The Board has selected May 31, 2023, as a deadline to raise sufficient funds in order to continue operations through the 2023-2024 academic year. Based on recent budgetary needs, that amount could be as great as $12 million. Based on the success of this goal, on May 31 the Board will determine whether to continue operations for the 2023-2024 academic year.”

Julia Jensen: So, a May 31st deadline, announced to the whole student body. Quite a step towards a decision compared to the previous semester. But, now think back. We released the 

first episode around eight weeks ago. Can you imagine waiting another eight episodes, then a month, before an answer? That’s about how long it was for us students up until this deadline. But once again, Middle States took action that had far reaching consequences. And that's what we’re going to examine right now.

…

Colby McCaskill: On May 26th, I got a text from a few different friends, all sending links to the Middle States website. The newest accreditation action was dated that day and did quite a lot. Essentially, Middle States took, quote, “immediate adverse action to withdraw accreditation from The King’s College.” According to Middle states, all the information they had requested so far — that show cause report from March, the teach out plan and follow up meetings in April — it all demonstrated that King’s could not, quote “sustain itself in the short or long term.” This wasn’t unforeseen. Like this decision was definitely a possible one in my mind, based on the follow up report. 

Middle States Representative: Cognizant of the college’s continuing financial struggles and publicity around them, in building this fiscal year’s 2024 budget plan, the administration reduced the enrollment projections to 150 students for the fall semester that would generate 2.475 million in tuition revenue; and for accounting for no expenditure reductions the budget projects a deficit of 11.1 million dollars that would need to come from non-tuition revenue sources, probably anticipating a shortfall. The report and interviews reveal no realistic strategy to adequately address the forecasted deficit. The multi-year deficit is forecasted in the financial plan. Income state minus cash bases further confirm that the college does not have adequate financial resources to support its educational purpose and programs and to ensure financial stability. Projected shortfalls for the coming five years range from $11.5 million next year to 5.34 million in 2027-2028. 

Julia Jensen: But for me, for a lot of students, it was incredibly disappointing. Infuriating almost. And not just because it was revoking accreditation. The students had been told by administrators that King’s would have the chance to explain themselves in June. This is what the Provost told students in the final community update. This was before the follow up meeting.

Matt Parks: So it'll be over two weeks before that report is finalized. Then there's a hearing in June, June 21, and 22nd, then there's a response for that, there's even an appeal process beyond that, if you want to go down that route. So this, again, as they say, is the beginning of a process where they will evaluate whether we meet their standards moving forward. 

Julia Jensen: Middle States revoked accreditation not only before the June hearing, but before the Board of Trustees deadline. In an email sent to the student body, the Board of Trustees called the decision “hasty” and “without due process.” Middle states rescinded the possibility of a hearing in their adverse action. The Board seemed to despise that the most.

Colby McCaskill: And, yeah, like I really get that. 

Julia Jensen: Yes! Like it’s really disappointing on so many levels, because we didn’t want King’s to die! And so we were holding out hope that somehow it could survive. And so for Middle States to revoke accreditation not just before the Board’s deadline, but their own? It kind of pushes me to distrust them. Why revoke accreditation before the hearing? Why can’t you follow your own deadlines? 

Colby McCaskill: So, at that point, The King’s College was technically still accredited, but Middle States had begun the process of removing that accreditation. In their action, the commission required King’s to do seven things by June 2nd. And we won’t quote them directly because that’s too tedious. You can view them on the MSCHE website. But in essence, Middle States required King’s to begin to shut down. To start executing teach out agreements, issue transcripts, tell the constituents of the college the decision, including potential students, and declare it on their website that soon, they are going to be no longer accredited.

Julia Jensen: Middle States also had stipulations. King’s was only allowed to stay accredited for the summer if it stops enrolling new students, makes sure that it updates its website accordingly, and begins to implement its teach out plan. I told you it was far reaching. 

Colby McCaskill: The Middle States Commission on Higher Education had actually decided that King’s wasn’t worthy of accreditation anymore, and took action to make sure it didn’t continue to operate. 

Julia Jensen: This is sad news, this adverse action. And we still feel the weight of this. I want King’s to thrive, and not just because I had a meaningful experience there, but because I think it’s a really cool idea. 

Colby McCaskill: The college thought so as well, because they notified Middle States that they intended to appeal the decision.

Julia Jensen: This is how the summer started. With a fundraising deadline from the college, and a deadline from the commission. And then, before both those deadlines, we were brought along a totally new path of appeals and really disappointing actions. Still. After all the ambiguity of the spring semester. There was still no definitive answer.

Eric: Okay, so yeah, I have three boys, the youngest was born in 2016. We're living in New York City. And in April of 2018, I became a single, a full time single father. So King’s was immensely supportive during that time. 

Colby McCaskill: This is Eric. You heard a little bit from him in episode one. He worked at King’s from 2015 to 2022. Meaning, his time at King’s overlapped with the Thornbury Administration. We’ll talk more about them in episode five. Eric’s time at King’s also intersected with the Presidency of Tim Gibson, and Interim President Stockwell Day. How I got in contact with Eric though, was through Sophia. The two had significant overlap during their time at the college.

Eric: Sophia is a good friend. 

Colby McCaskill: But let’s go back to Eric’s story that I interrupted. He had just experienced a family tragedy. And what did King’s do?

Eric: I remember, the day after, like that happened. You know, I was at work that day. And of course, just all this stuff, my life is falling apart inside of me. But the first person that I told outside of my really, really, really close friends. The first person that I told was Kimberly Thornbury. I'll always remember standing in her office and just telling her about what happened and how she just said: Whatever it takes, and we will support you. And King’s definitely did.

Colby McCaskill: I think this moment was one of the major parts of Eric’s story at King’s. It goes to show how this place, for many, hasn’t been just a job. It’s also been a place of support and genuine community. Eric’s job at King’s was in their digital media department. In 2015, it felt like an upstart. 

Eric: Admissions had been a department I think, for as long as King’s had, obviously, existed. But marketing and communications did not really exist as a department until my colleague Natalie Nakamura, who was hired two weeks before me, and I were hired in August of 2015. So we moved into this really, really small office in the President's suite. I can't remember the number. But everyone who's had that office since then, has had it to themselves, but we shared it. And we also shared it with a student worker as well. So there are three of us crammed in that office. But yeah, my job was to do digital marketing type stuff. I ended up just being the master of the website, developing it and maintaining it.

Colby McCaskill: Eric and his team are the masterminds behind the website. Behind a bunch of the videos you see on the college’s youtube page. They are the ones that  shaped much of the public brand of King’s. Over his time at the school, Eric fell in love with the work. The creative freedom. The caliber of colleagues. The purpose that pervaded every aspect of work there. 

Eric: When I moved to New York from Florida, I was thinking like: Oh, we're gonna be some of the few Christians up here, and we're moving to a dark place. And, like, he totally proved us wrong. Just every step along the way. You know, we just saw that God is doing so much cool stuff that he doesn't necessarily stamp his name on. And, you know, King’s, I felt like, embodied that. Yes, it's a Christian college, but the college is training young people to operate in the real world. Not to just operate in Christian circles. Obviously not to be educated or not to live in a bubble, not to work in a bubble. But you can be raised up and taught. With the, again—I'm trying not to quote the mission here—but you know, just to be raised up and taught through a faith perspective. But also just to understand the real world, and to be confident to work in any setting. And I love that, you know, I still do. So I just really fell, I fell hard for the King's mission.

…

Like I felt like we were all on board, in line, to support this mission. And it was a really cool time at the college.

Colby McCaskill: But where Eric’s time at King’s collided with Primacorp, that’s the part that we need to talk about the most.

Eric: Let's see. So that I think was April or May of 2021. And we got called into a Zoom call. And yeah, we were just kind of told that this was happening. Yeah, like no warning or hint of this partnership coming. And, I had known, like, we all had known that King’s is not swimming in cash. Like there's no huge endowment ready to save us or to draw forever or whatever. And we also knew what was happening on the admission side, because of all the stuff that I just talked about, all the challenges that they faced in the face of COVID and stuff. There was definitely no advance warning or indicators that all of a sudden we would be—not only would the college be partnering with this corporation from Canada we had never heard of, we are now their employees. So, yeah, I think up until now you can kind of tell how much the King's College means to me in that community. And to no longer be employees of there? That was kind of a gut punch. I mean, nothing that I blamed anyone for. I don't think I took it personally or anything like that, but it's still jarring. 

…

Yeah, going into the partnership, we were of course told how amazing of a deal this was going to be, not just for King’s, but also for us personally. Or for our department, and that no longer were we going to be operating with the limited budget that we had operated with the whole time. Now we have all these resources to really market the college, to really reach out to students across the country, and stuff. We were going to have access to the marketing expertise at Primacorp. And, you know, there was talk about flying us out to Vancouver, or wherever they are in Canada, flying out to the home office, in British Columbia. It's beautiful there, and we were going to have meetings and stuff. You know, there was talk about having really really nice swag. Like, making that. And then of course, that was going to have some wow factor for potential students. Yeah, of course, none of that came to fruition. And, for me personally, we were definitely suspect from day one. Which is completely natural. I kept on drawing comparisons to The Office and Dunder Mifflin and Sabre. Because that company had bought them out and stuff. 

Colby McCaskill: The corporate people that don't really understand, the on-the-ground.

Eric: Yeah. So it could be—they could be—a very principled, successful company, and we would still be suspect, because it happens so suddenly. I don't think that something like that could happen and it would just be like, all positive and sunshine, like, great! I now have a new employer that I know nothing about. But they say everything's going to be even better than it was. 

Julia Jensen: What Eric is describing here is an abrupt end to his employment with TKC. An immediate switch to working for a company called Campus Support. It’s actually one of Primacorp’s educational consulting arms. This sudden change had pretty far reaching implications. 

Eric: It happened pretty quickly. Our whole HR setup changed. And we were officially Primacorp employees. The name of the company was Campus Support, but they were the company, I guess the branch of Primacorp, that we worked for. So we were campus support employees.

Colby McCaskill: As Eric explained it to me, before the Primacorp days, the creative license was essentially infinite.

Eric: Over the years we got to try out with—we got to make some, some 360 virtual reality video, because we just wanted to try it out. And we had the headsets at admissions fairs. And, you know, we got to do stuff like that. And, you know, we made a new website, because we felt like the college needed it, but also because we wanted to, and we could achieve it. 

Julia Jensen: But when Primacorp came in, that dynamic between what was desired and what was pursued, shifted.

Eric: So Campus Support would create the creative for ads, banners and things like that. And then send it to our team for review, and approval, and then it would also get sent to King’s, you know, folks on The King's College side, since we're no longer on the King's College side, for that review and approval. 

…

And that advertising definitely took off. You know, money was poured into advertising. But it was not something that was on our plates to work on.

…

No, we, yeah, I wouldn't say that we were creating anything. 

…

Which, obviously, is a big shift. You know, a lot more money was definitely — more money that we had ever handled for advertising — was getting put into the ad campaigns and stuff. And they had a full on advertising agency, managing everything. So that's expertise and bandwidth that our small team never had. 

Colby McCaskill: Eric’s role changed. He was the approver rather than creator. And, admittedly, it was still a role where—in small ways—Eric’s love of the college could help shape the branding. But he still felt as though his vision was not one Primacorp shared.

Eric: Again, from my experience, Primacorp did not step in and say: You can't work on this. So there wasn't really that much oversight there. And because we owned—King’s owned—the website. Primacorp did not, they didn't step in and try to control branding, or language or messaging, at least within the realm in which I operated.

…

But in terms of growth, even creative and professional growth, I didn't see the opportunities for that anymore with The King's College/Primacorp. I talked about the creative freedom that we had under Kimberly Thornbury. I still felt like we had creative freedom, but it just seemed like there was a lot less possible.

…

We also felt like we knew King’s the best. And this is a place that, of course, we knew the best and we had personal investment in and we felt like we knew the language, like we knew how to speak to the types of students who would come to King’s. And to have folks who, no matter their expertise or their position, I mean, you got to know the place. And having folks who don't know the place running that. Yeah — that's like…I like finding the right adjectives that cover all the bases. I'm trying to find what that adjective is. It was…disconcerting. Because we knew what the hierarchy was. This was the deal that the college signed. And this is the deal that we signed as employees because no one was forcing us to stay. So, we knew, once we were told, we knew the situation. But I think if anything, even then we can kind of look back—thinking back to it. And I'm sure that my thinking was that: What a shame.

Julia Jensen: Eric decided to move back to Florida a few months after the Primacorp merger. He officially left Campus Support — King’s — about a year later in October 2022.

Eric: Yeah, it's just really sad to see. And you know, I was just thinking a lot about the students, and about my friends who still work there. And you know, just this place that I invested seven years into, that I feel like invested in me, that had this community. And just seeing it go from limping along to crawling to now, I picture someone crawling through the desert and just just kind of like giving up there. Yeah, it is, it is really sad.

Colby McCaskill: At this point, I hope you’re wondering who really is behind all this. If Primacorp is simply the cold corporate face behind these present dubious situations, then is there anyone responsible inside Primacorp?

Julia Jensen: That is a great question! Thanks for asking it. 

Colby McCaskill: The answer to your question is what we are going to turn to next, a profile on an executive-level individual that was involved in not only the King’s and Quest catastrophes, but much, much more.

Colby McCaskill: We’re going to dedicate some time on our show this week to talking about sorrow, and sadness. About how this particular college, that is predominantly Christian, dealt with all the ambiguity. 

Julia Jensen: After the semester ended, we continued to talk to staff, faculty, and students, much of it unrecorded, a little bit on tape. 

Colby McCaskill: We wanted to keep up with the story as it unfolded. And in May, June, July, and even August, I kept asking my question: Is King’s closing? And I continued to get confused answers.

Sophia: Oh. I mean, in my mind, there's a percentage of it surviving. Because God is a god who can move mountains. So it's never absolute. But very likely it is. But then again, like there was always a sizable chance that when it reopened the next year, since you know, 2019. So it's just gotten exponentially bigger, that chance. 

Julia Jensen: And with the impending deadline of that date of decision that the Board had set for itself, it felt even more ambivalent every day we didn’t hear news, and the deadline still loomed.

Sarah: At this point, we need a miracle. We need a miracle. I mean, we have what? Six days? Yeah, we have six days until the board is like letting us know. I don't know, if it's solely based off of the 12 million goal that they'd said, I'd say yes. Which I mean, as sad as it is, it's just kind of the reality of the situation. I can't say officially yes. Like, I don't know. But based off of giving, we've raised a lot, but we haven't raised nearly enough.

Colby McCaskill: Dru Johnson, who you’ll hear a lot more from soon, talked to me a day before the 31st.

Dru: I don't know what the situation is now. It's the same as it's always been, which is waiting to hear what the board is going to do. Now we have a different board. So the waiting is different, I think with this board. But up to this point, it wouldn't have surprised me if we got to this tomorrow, which is supposed to be the big day where they're gonna make a decision. And they say: Oh, we need one more week. Right? Or they just don't say anything at all. Right? It's just is silence and you're like: Well, what are they gonna say? What are they going to do?

Colby McCaskill: The next day, the board actually did send an email out…informing the King’s community that it was continuing to seek strategic alliances, and was planning on giving an update June 16th. No announcement of closure. No final decision made public. Another extension. And for the board, perhaps this was a good choice. I had a friend who is well versed in consulting work tell me recently: The number one goal of business is to stay in business. 

Julia Jensen: So, by that logic, any continuation of the King's is the best possible outcome. You know, just imagine it. Many of the students who are put off by King’s recent financial crisis don’t return, but they have some who stay, maybe around 30. After a few years, maybe they are in a different space, have different funding goals, new donors. They begin to build back again. By the time they are back up to the numbers they were at a few years ago before COVID, most, if not all the students might not even be cognizant of the college’s previous financial woes. King’s continues, as it always has, by letting those who fall away, fall away. And trying just to get more and more in, no matter the financial status. This college, like all institutions, does not have to think in terms of individual students, but in terms of decades.

Colby McCaskill: But that’s not the only response. Remember Quest University? The one from Canada that we talked about in Episode 3? Quest announced closure very early on in their academic year. They didn’t wait. They said, quote “Although Quest continues to explore financing options and remains hopeful, it has been unable to secure additional funding for ongoing operations beyond the Spring. As a result, the Board concluded that it had no alternative but to make the responsible decision it has at this time.” To be totally frank, Julia and I still disagree over this point. What is best? trying to remain open in ambiguity, or to decide prematurely? 

Julia Jensen: You’ve listened to this whole series, I'm sure you can form an opinion on this question as well.

Colby McCaskill: But what we are in agreement about is that this waiting was really hard.

Julia Jensen: Even before this May 31 deadline, when it felt like a decision ought to be coming as soon as possible, people were feeling upset.

Richard: They keep moving the goalposts, and it’s pissing me off. Originally I heard that they were gonna make a decision—

Colby McCaskill: Why does that piss you off?

Richard: Just make a decision. Stop trying to string people along. At least from what I've heard at the P-cab, or President's cabinet, they keep talking about the impact on students and so yes, students have to figure out what they're going to do next year in terms of leases, school plans. But so does staff and faculty. We got to figure out if we need to get new jobs. Stringing us along for this long is just making it harder to find new opportunities.

Julia Jensen: This is a big deal. There has been very little allowance for grief, because, crucially, King's had not announced closure.

Sarah: Honestly, I've spent the entire semester void of emotion. It hasn't hit. I think this is kind of how it is for a lot of people. It just hasn't hit. We're kind of, especially for students that are in school right now, like summer students, we're kind of all just in survival mode. Like: Let's just get through, let's just push through, let's make it to the next day. And I think that's kind of how a lot of us were for most of the semester and a lot of the people outside of the program too. So I'm feeling okay about it. I don't really know, because I haven't processed any of it yet. But I mean, I'll let you know, in two months, because I'm pretty sure it will be way different in two months. 

Colby McCaskill: As Dru describes it, this inability to have emotional closure is actually really harmful. 

Dru: Because, me and my wife have both said: The most unfair thing about all of this is that, because there's been all this back and forth, nobody's had a chance to grieve. So if they just said in March: Look, we're closing the school. Then everybody would be able to grieve. We'd be able to put systems in place so that people could get moved to what they needed to do next. And instead, it hit the freshmen harder, because the upperclassmen were like: Oh, yeah, this might be real. The freshmen seem to be like: Something's gonna happen. Something's gonna change. And even every freshman I talked to, I'm like: I don't think it's going to change. I think this is going—the ship’s going down. But hopefully it won't, but I think it is. And so there was never—we never had a proper school wide grieving. Right? We never had the kind of like: Oh, they're dead. This thing that we all were enthusiastically involved in for years, it’s now, it's dead. 

…

So I think that was the thing that was frustrating to me is that that back and forth was really thoughtless about that communities need to grieve. I mean, it would be the equivalent, somebody died, and then we just prayed for resurrection. Someone's like: Let's just pray for resurrection. For six months non-stop. Let's get an IHOP prayer line going. And we're just going to pray that they're resurrected for six months. And it's good intentions gone really wrong. Right? That really does rob people of the ability to grieve the sting of death. Something has died. And that's a bad thing, ultimately. Or it's a hurtful thing, whether it's bad or good in the long run, it hurts.

Julia Jensen: Dru said he had to commit to letting King’s die for him to be able to move on, get another job, and do what’s best for his family and finances.

Colby McCaskill: But that’s really damaging. Right? The college’s actions demonstrate that it has decided, for the past semester, perhaps more, that it will not admit fault or announce closure, unless forced to. And that goes back to even before New York. The old TKC in Briarcliff also closed down due to money problems, but not before Middle States forcibly stripped their accreditation from them.

Julia Jensen: Or it’s totally understandable. I mean, there is a possibility you might get enough money to continue. If you stay open, if you wait long enough and don’t announce closure, you might get some kind of partnership and remain open. So it kind of comes down to: what is the priority? Is the main interest the student, faculty and staff sanity? Their emotional well-being? Or is it to try to remain open?

Colby McCaskill: Dru’s reaction to King’s potentially closing was actually surprising to hear. 

Dru: I'm just not as pessimistic that it's a horrible thing that King’s has gone away. I see it as kind of like: Well, you know, churches come and go. Institutions come and go. Like: That's okay. If the energy King’s—it's the other way you can look at it is: King’s has been spreading King’s energy all around the world and that's not gonna go away. You or somebody else might start another college someday that has that same like: Here's what I experienced. Maybe it doesn't meet the needs of the next generation. But here's my experience. I want to adapt that energy into some new project or church or whatever. It's not wasted.

…

Eric: I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that it's been life changing. And it continues, and it will continue to play a big part in my future, even though I stopped working there of October 2022. And even though the college sadly, has all intents and purposes, shut down. Yeah, the story of King’s in my life is not done being written.

Julia Jensen: If you ask people about those months of uncertainty between the Welcome Back Gathering and now, often, you get answers that liken the King’s situation to a dying relative.

Evan: I don't know that this is the right metaphor. But if say, you have an elderly relative that is in hospital for cancer, and you know, there's an entirely reasonable, nonzero chance that she'll make it, you'll say it's a grandmother or an aunt or something like that, you know, it's possible, she's receiving good care. She's taking it easy as possible. But if you just refuse to acknowledge in general, or talk about like, it has a serious possibility of happening, if you don't talk about the fact that this relative might die, and are just saying she's getting treatment, she's getting treatment, she's getting treatment, or not acknowledging the mortality of the person at all. That makes it much harder to cope or to prepare, it shouldn't happen. 

…

Sophia: Oh, yeah. I mean, it's kind of like when you have a relative slowly die. You know that everything comes to an end. But it's just happening faster than you'd like.  

…

Dru: I'm like: how's it going? And he's like, it's just really weird knowing your wife could die, but you're not sure. And so in a much lesser way, I feel like something like that has been going on the King’s is like: Well it could die? Maybe it won't. Maybe it could. And again, that back and forth is just no good for anybody. 

Colby McCaskill: In my interview with Sarah Bensinger, she said something that struck me as really sad. 

Sarah: I haven't really grieved yet. Which I don't think is healthy. But I think there's also this narrative of: Just trusting God and pray and everything will be okay. Which I mean, obviously I trust in God, obviously I pray, but I think sometimes people's feelings are discredited because it's showing a lack of faith if you're stressed or nervous or upset, and I don't think that it is, I think it's just like a normal reaction to things that happen in this world.

Colby McCaskill: It breaks my little heart to know that feeling. To know how scary it is to be in a place that does not have answers, and to know that if I allow emotion, it will feel like that sadness will never end. That is not a place that’s good for me. I don’t think that's a place that’s good for anyone, where one’s hope, even one’s faith as a Christian, has been conflated with the continuation of a school that has, for decades, never been financially stable. When I asked Sophia Coston, that recent alum that worked for Primacorp in episode two, about her grief, she broke my heart too.

Sophia: In my mind, there will be grief officially, when I know that my son won't ever have a chance to attend. We can't—buildings change in New York all the time. So maybe we can have him walk past in a few years and say that's where mom and dad met. Those are the doors where I saw your father leave for the first time. And I thought: Oh, that's Iain Coston. That's the office where he brought me flowers and asked me out for the first time. That's a very emotional thing. 

…

Beyond that, I also know that it's not my whole identity. The gospel will very, very much be alive without The King's College. It's just too bad because I think it's served in such a wonderful way, for so long. 

…

But I also know that, I kind of knew, and this is probably from being an admissions counselor, higher education was going to change drastically. I knew that college wouldn't stay the same. I knew that there were going to be a lot of closures of colleges.

…

So none of this is shocking. It's just personal. Because this was mine. This was ours. What’s so cool is, honestly, I thought about the fact that Iain and I convinced you to go to King’s all the time. Because I never felt like I lied to you. I just felt so sad that we couldn't give you what we had. I thought about that a lot. And how I don't regret sharing my experience. I just so regret that it wasn't available. And you got a taste, you did not get a full experience. And that's probably sadder than the fact that Luther will never go to King's, honestly. It just—it really is. 

Colby McCaskill: Remember how the Board had set June 16th as the deadline? Well we got an email on June 16th…moving the goalposts to June 23rd. We then got another email, a week late, on June 29th…saying an update was on its way by July 14th. On July 14th, we got another email…saying they, quote, “anticipate making a significant announcement early next week.” You can read all those emails by the way. We’ve linked to copies of them in the transcript. Was this the happy ending? Had it taken this long to finally save King’s? Were we actually going to get an answer? Would they move the goalposts?

Julia Jensen: In January of 2023, the interim President for a 

Dru: Small.

Stockwell: Private.

Sophia: Christian.

Julia Jensen: school in downtown manhattan addressed the student body, expressing, among other things, that 

Stockwell: The King’s College had a little bit of a triple whammy over the last couple of years.

Colby McCaskill: For the first time, these students were told that a fall semester was not guaranteed. 

Stockwell: We can’t guarantee anything. You want something signed in writing?

Colby McCaskill: A week before, the Interim President had held several

Sarah: Meetings

Mattilyn: Meetings

Dru: Meetings

Joseph: Meetings

Colby McCaskill: With

David: Faculty

Warren: Staff

Colby McCaskill: And 

Mattilyn: Student Body President

Colby McCaskill: to explain the situation in detail.

Joseph: He said we are not currently announcing the closing of The King's College.

Julia Jensen: Publicly, the reasoning was three major things. The deaths of

Stockwell: one our most significant donors ever.

…

The double whammy of COVID. 

Julia Jensen: And also 

Stockwell: Significant issues related to what we call a recession.

Colby McCaskill: The truth, though, was that King’s hadn’t really been financially secure. 

Ben: They constantly needed money, basically.

Colby McCaskill: Ever since its founding in 1938, King’s had always operated on a 

Kimberly: Broken Business Model

Julia Jensen: In the wake of the 2016 presidential election, the college’s president had quit over political differences with the Board of Trustees. After the next president’s fundraising efforts hadn’t panned out, the college turned to Primacorp Ventures.

Colby McCaskill: Primacorp is a canadian consulting company with a 

Narrator: President and CEO 

Colby McCaskill: that has decades of scrupulous business dealings behind him. The King’s College was desperate for funds. 

David: And that desperation or the perception of desperation very rarely leads to an ideal transaction. 

Colby McCaskill: Unless they partnered with Primacorp, they would have shut down.

Sarah: Primacorp is the one that saved us.

Julia Jensen: The newly appointed, Primacorp-affiliated Board of Trustees instituted

Rachel: The Honorable Stockwell Day

Julia Jensen: to the role of 

David: Interim President 

Julia Jensen: after they ousted Tim Gibson. 

Olivia: President Gibson was fired. 

Julia Jensen: But despite Primacorp’s hope to use King’s to turn a profit, it wasn’t working out. 

Colby McCaskill: In November 2022, Stockwell Day announced budget cuts and layoffs. In January, just a few months later, the college announced a deficit of 2.6 million dollars. Stockwell Day implored the student body to rejoice and exude thankfulness.

Julia Jensen: The college tried to 

Kimberly: Sell DeVos

Checky: It’s on-campus housing

Julia Jensen: Press highlighted the failing college and scrutiny turned to Primacorp. Internal whistleblowers frightened students 

Julia: I remember us in the stairwell. 

Rachel: Oh yeah. Weeping. 

Colby McCaskill: About a month later, Primacorp’s CEO agreed to extend a loan to King’s. But it didn’t do much to slow down the death spiral. Actually, when that 2 million dollar loan came in, Primacorp fired almost all of the admissions staff. 

Julia Jensen: The Middle States Commission on Higher Education began asking questions. King’s didn’t

Checky: pay their rent.

Julia Jensen: Students were physically intimidated at their homes for a sum that they had already paid. 

Colby McCaskill: The college was not able to pay for apartment utilities. Students received notices that their service would be turned off unless the college paid. The student body plunged into hopelessness. 

Rachel: Void of hope, I think is what I would characterize it as. 

Julia Jensen: The King’s College could not, possibly even would not admit defeat. The fall semester was still a possibility. 

Matthew: No assurance that that means we're closing, right?

Julia Jensen: The purgatory of ambiguity felt endless. When would we know if all our hopes were in vain? 

David: There’s been no decision to bring King’s to a premature end, at this stage.

Julia Jensen: Worry.

Colby McCaskill: Palpable anxiety. 

Julia Jensen: There were promises made. 

David: Within seven to ten days we should know.

Colby McCaskill: And promises broken. 

Mattilyn: You all are dismissed, I have nothing for you. 

Colby McCaskill: And a question began brewing.

Callie: And so I was like: What are we doing after this?

Colby McCaskill: If we make it to the fall, how much will we need then? 

Julia Jensen: Some recruiters stopped. 

Richard: I’ve personally stopped recruiting for volleyball. Same thing with Bracey for soccer.

Julia Jensen: They figured it had come to the point where recruiting fall students would be immoral. 

Richard: You want me to lie by omission? 

Colby McCaskill: Others continued. 

Parker: You know, we’re still moving forward. 

Colby McCaskill: All the while, the Administration played the victim card. Over. And Over. And Over again. 

Julia Jensen: One bright light. Some students concocted a letter writing campaign to highlight the virtues of King’s.

Matthew: I think we have something like 80 letters so far. 

Colby McCaskill: Primacorp eventually did pull out of King’s.

David: The Primacorp separation is official. 

Julia Jensen: The student body was excited. 

[Applause] 

Colby McCaskill: But it still didn’t do much to slow the death spiral. Some tried to help by selling NFTs. The King’s College still did not announce closure. 

David: The Board has not, I repeat it has not made a decision to close.

Julia Jensen: Some professors made the decision to leave.

Dru: I just said: This place is closing and I don’t see a way that that isn’t going to happen. 

Julia Jensen: Others stayed on until the end. 

David: Knowing them, knowing the faculty and staff they are here for you, are committed to you.

Julia Jensen: Students too. 

Colby McCaskill: Some wanted to hold on to hope. 

Shayley: I mean I clearly have some faith that it’s all going to work out, and I do hope it does.

Colby McCaskill: Others felt the need to move on. 

Julia Jensen: The college kept fundraising 

Reeve: So, I wanted to let you know that we are reaching out to donors in a couple of days.

…

Over 251,000

…

Matthew: Around half a million dollars.

…

David: Around 680,000 dollars raised.

…

Sarah: We just reached a million since February.

Colby McCaskill: But it wasn’t enough. 

Sarah: Not the 12 the board was hoping for. 

Julia Jensen: The college held graduation 

Henry: Truly today, we gather under some unusual circumstances. 

Colby McCaskill: But The King’s College still did not announce closure.

Henry: And yet, despite this uncertainty…

Julia Jensen: The semester ended…without an answer. 

Colby McCaskill: Did they know that 

Dru: communities need to grieve? 

Colby McCaskill: Was it faith? Was it recklessness? 

Julia Jensen: Well…

Colby McCaskill: Was it hope in 

Sarah: a repeated pattern of people coming in, giving us money, and us hoping it will be enough.

Julia Jensen: I mean… 

Colby McCaskill: Was it reasonable hope? 

Julia Jensen: You see…

Colby McCaskill: Is The King’s College still alive? 

Julia Jensen: No. 

Colby McCaskill: No, when you announce to students that you need 2.6 million dollars in the middle of the year, you start to death spiral. When only over a million is raised towards your cause, your academic accreditor begins revoking accreditation. When it costs over 

Greg:10 million dollars

Colby McCaskill: Annually to run your school, and you don’t have that, you perish. 

Julia Jensen: In July 2023, The King’s College met its demise. It announced closure. It’s a tragedy. Because this place was really special in a lot of ways. 

Kimberly: Greg called them Aston Martin faculty.

Julia Jensen: But that speciality didn’t override politics, philosophy and basic economics. Those things still matter. 

Colby McCaskill: But hey, 

Joseph: It’s easy to criticize the man in the arena when you’re on the sidelines. It’s also easy to criticize in retrospect. 

Colby McCaskill: So in the end, it wasn’t just one person’s fault, but a plethora of inflection points. No one person is the villain. But then again, no one is entirely innocent. 

Julia Jensen: And, there's one more thing here. The college’s mission was to send people out, to spread a Christian understanding out into the world. 

Colby McCaskill: Humility, kindness, and generosity. A thirst for truth, and a love of others. Did it do that? Yes. Even in its death, yes.

Colby McCaskill: And what happened to those students after The King’s College died? Well, we asked you.

Rachel: I was the one with the quote: Right now I am void of hope. But now that King’s has officially not offered classes this fall, I am studying political science at St. Joseph's University. 

…

I am playing volleyball for them as well.

…

I’ve also been able to connect with the King’s network still in New York City.

…

I ache every single day to return to kings and their rigorous curriculum

…

Still, I look forward to accelerating my path towards my career, and will carry my King's education with me wherever I go next. 

…

Matthew: This is Matthew Peterson, recording this as I walk away from my new school, Baruch College. I’ve been thinking a lot lately about why it is that I came to the city in the first place, and ultimately King’s. And I’ve just been reminded of God's incredible providence, and his incredible way of orchestrating all things simultaneously — the complexity of his plan. I realized that I’ve kind of forgotten why it was that I came to New York in the first place. And the reality is, I came to New York because there was a school there where I knew I could live with Christians. I could be engaged in Christian community. But I would also be in a city that I knew would confront me with all sorts of things, people and ideas I'd never heard before, I met with, and challenge my faith. And I very much wanted that. However once I got to King’s, because of the all consuming nature of it. It became very hard for me to spend any time outside of the campus. And I did very little of actually engaging with those hard ideas and new people and new concepts. And I'm just sitting here and realizing that now, I'm at a school, a secular school with people who believe all sorts of things, a secular work environment, people who believe all sorts of things. And still, because of King’s. I've been able to keep Christian community. And I live with Christians and I talk to other believers every day and I talk to unbelievers every day. And I'm just very, very thankful for that. God always, always knows what he's doing. And he's been good

Colby McCaskill: I couldn’t have said it better myself. Thank you so much for listening. That is it for this episode, and for this series. If you would like to hear more about The King’s College from the students perspective, you can visit tkcletters.com to read a bunch of different notes that students wrote to commemorate their time at King’s. 

Julia Jensen: This show was written, produced, and edited by me Julia Jensen,

Colby McCaskill: And me, Colby McCaskill.

Julia Jensen: A big thank you to all of you who dedicated your time, and voice, to help our reporting come to life.

Colby McCaskill: From our team at Empire State Tribune, our Editor in Chief is Myrian Orea. We actually said her name wrong in the first episode, because she recently got married. Congratulations Myrian! And sorry about that. Melinda Huspen is our Managing Editor. 

Julia Jensen: Special thanks to Matthew Peterson, the regular host of Broadway and Exchange for letting us take over. And of course to Rob Bruder and his truly amazing soundtrack.

Colby McCaskill: Big thanks to our other editors on this project, Mandie-Beth Chau and Evan Louey-Dacus. Rafa Oliveira. Our social media coordinator, Angelina Ispir.

Julia Jensen: Thank you to the Executive director of Religion Unplugged, Clemente Lisi. And also Professor Paul Glader. They were both very encouraging this past year, and you may not have been hearing our voices if it wasn’t for their expertise

Colby McCaskill: As always, if you want to dive deeper into this story you can find links to all that in the transcript and show description. Demise Of The Crown is produced by Empire State Tribune, in collaboration with Broadway & Exchange.