<p>Twice in recent decades this was tried and beaten back by student protests against the abandonment of need-blind status by the Wesleyan administration.</p>
<p>I wonder if this is why this was all such a surprise, this time. Seems clear the administration tried hard to keep the cat in the bag as long as possible, probably to prevent input from students/alums that would almost certainly be highly negative.</p>
<p>As I read somewhere else, they could have first sent out a letter to the alums saying “if we don’t raise X dollars by Y date, we’ll need to go to a need-aware admissions policy.”</p>