Folt leaves behind complicated legacy
Notable moments from her tenure include COVID-19 and student encampments.
By DAVID RENDON
After five years as president of USC, Carol Folt announced her retirement in a communitywide email Friday morning, set to begin at the end of the 2024-25 academic year.
This comes after Folt’s contract extension in July. At the time, the University did not provide more information about the length of the extended contract.
In her time as president, Folt led the school through the coronavirus pandemic and pro-Palestine student encampments in Spring 2024. Her handling of the student encampments was controversial, with the Academic Senate passing a vote of no confidence and professors and former valedictorians writing critical letters to the editor of the Daily Trojan.
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The Daily Trojan conducted a survey on Folt’s retirement from Friday afternoon to Monday night and received 52 responses. Respondents were asked to rate their satisfaction with Folt’s tenure and gave Folt a mean score of 3.9 on a scale of 10. Approximately three-fourths of respondents reported that they were happy to see Folt retiring.
Jazmin Gallegos, a USC alum who graduated in Spring 2024, said that because she started in 2020 during the coronavirus pandemic, and her sophomore year was hybrid, only her junior year was “normal” because her senior year felt colored by Folt’s controversies.
“The last year really showed a lot of her character, and not just her character, but also the Board of Trustees’ [character] with where they prioritize student safety,” Gallegos said.
Brooke Maille / Daily Trojan
Gallegos particularly criticized Folt for allowing the Los Angeles Police Department on campus to police the protests, particularly because the South Central community around USC is predominantly Latine and Black. In 2019, a report found that Black people and Latine people experienced a higher likelihood of being searched by the LAPD than their white counterparts and were twice as likely to be handcuffed.
“There’s also this legacy of endangerment that she essentially brought to her students and the surrounding community of USC,” Gallegos said.
In the spring, Folt also drew criticism for canceling Asna Tabassum’s valedictorian speech, canceling the main commencement, banning protesters from walking at their commencement ceremonies and eventually introducing security checkpoints to enter campus.
“She made — especially at the end of last year — probably the worst choice in every scenario,” said Sreya Chilukuri, a junior majoring in biomedical engineering. ”Everything that they could have done to make the situation worse, they did.”
Chilukuri felt that it was too late for Folt to step down and that the right time for her to have done this would have been at the end of last year.
When Folt started her term, she introduced five moonshot goals, including prioritizing sustainability. This included opening the Sustainability Hub in the Wilson Student Union in September 2023.
Seungmin Han / Daily Trojan
“That really helped cement her priority when she first started working as the president — of bringing sustainability and making USC a more sustainable campus,” Gallegos said. “The initiatives brought with that with all the composting bins and more sustainability-driven events across campus, like partnering with Annenberg and Marshall.”
Folt also outlined plans for the University to divest from fossil fuels over the course of 10 years. She also introduced “Assignment: Earth” with goals such as achieving carbon neutrality by 2025 and zero waste by 2028.
In her statement announcing her retirement, Folt discussed moments of “special significance” that displayed the University’s mission and values. Among these, she renamed the Center for International and Public Affairs, which used to be named after Rufus von KleinSmid, a eugenics leader and former University president. At the time of the renaming, she called it a “Call to Action” in an email to the community.
“A call to confront anti-Blackness and systemic racism, and unite as a diverse, equal, and inclusive university,” Folt wrote in a communitywide email in June 2020. “You have asked for actions, not rhetoric, and actions, now.”
Gallegos said it was good that Folt addressed concerns relating to anti-Blackness and raised attention to Diversity, Equity and Inclusion initiatives, but it was unfortunate that it took so much public demand and nationwide Black Lives Matter protests before any big changes were made.
“That just felt performative, but at least it’s something,” Gallegos said.
Harshitha Dasari / Daily Trojan
Gallegos credited Folt with helping fund student unions and organizations, which allowed Latine students like herself to celebrate their heritage and have a larger space on campus with the relocation of La CASA.
At the time of publishing, the University did not indicate a successor to Folt and said more information would be released in the new year. They indicated that the search for the 13th president would begin soon.
Braden Pollock, a freshman majoring in neuroscience, said he would want a president who said what they would do and act on it.
“I feel like it’s obviously one thing to promise something, it’s also another thing to actually take to action, go forward and execute on it,” Pollock said.
Chilukuri felt that it would be most important to have a president who listened to what students and faculty want rather than just performing “lip service.”
“I don’t think it’s actually going to happen because they are kind of indebted to the board and serve the board more than they serve the students and staff,” Chilukuri said.
Gallegos said that Folt was being used as damage control for the University, and the University and its Board of Trustees were trying to protect their reputation.
“This brings us to wonder what’s next,” Gallegos said. “Who’s going to be the next president? Are they going to continue the same priorities that Folt had, or are they going to turn around and face students and listen to their input?”
Nicholas Corral contributed to this report.
