After the controversial reaction to Fall ’25’s Big Cheese event, SGA President Esénia Bañuelos sent out an email last week announcing the cancellation of Spring 2026 Big Cheese, citing the administration’s unwillingness to attend if students were allowed to ask questions during the forum*. The SGA hosted a Big Cheese Cancellation Forum for students to better understand the SGA’s reasoning for cancelling Big Cheese this semester and to collaborate on how to ensure faculty are held to the same code as students.
SGA President Esénia Bañuelos ’26 opened the forum with a lecture on the history of Bryn Mawr’s semesterly Big Cheese event, which began in 2008 in response to former President Jane McAuliffe’s aspiration of establishing a secondary campus in Abu Dhabi. The intention was to question McAuliffe’s motivation for constructing sister campus in United Arab Emirates, fifteen hours from Philadelphia by plane and amidst a global financial crisis severely impacting both UAE and USA’s real estate markets. In the end, a secondary campus was not built. Since that first forum in 2008, Big Cheese has been an integral Bryn Mawr event in which students provoke serious conversation with senior staff about relevant issues on campus.
For more than 16 years, Big Cheese has been held the same way: the event is hosted by the SGA president and the Honor Board Head, who invite senior staff members to participate in a panel in which they are to answer the student body’s pre-approved and live questions and during an open mic section. “It’s the single most important event SGA offers, period,” SGA President Bañuelos stated at the Big Cheese Cancellation Forum. “[The cancellation of this event] chills free speech on campus.”
“The core of Big Cheese is the ability for students to connect with the rest of the campus community and present us as governances in community with one another to encourage the culture of transparency on our campus,” Bañuelos stated. “It is an expectation, as is detailed by our SGA Constitution under Article V, Section 1, Subsection B, under the eighth bullet point, that it takes place ‘once a semester’ with ‘a panel of administrators.’” However, according to Bañuelos, administrators did suggest Big Cheese alternatives, where panelists, Head of the Honor Board, and the SGA President would discuss safety on campus and personal responsibilities, notably without questions altogether. SGA declined as they believed the loss of open communication with panelists and students did not represent the principles of Big Cheese. On April 1, Bryn Mawr College’s Interim Dean of Student Life, Denine Rocco, reached out to the Bi-College News regarding the assertion that Big Cheese invitees expressed an unwillingness to attend. Her comment has been published as a Letter to the Editor.
“They just don’t want to answer questions anymore,” one student remarked. “They’re never gonna be comfortable with questions. They will crack down regardless,” another stated. “I worry that this could indicate a reluctance to engage with the student body on more serious topics and on campus relations,” Bañuelos asserted. “[I] think that the cancellation of even the suggested facilitated event could represent the end of an era of guaranteed, public communication between our campus leaders.”
The Office of the President did not provide comment.
CORRECTION: The article initially misattributed the ambition to establish a BMC program in Abu Dhabi to President Nancy Vickers, while it was actually President Jane McAuliffe.
