Loyola’s Version of Cura Personalis Comes with a Deactivation Notice  

At Loyola, the phrase “cura personalis” is everywhere.

It floats across first-year orientation slides, drapes itself over banners and appears in mission statements like a sacred spell. The Jesuit saying promises care for the whole person, which sounds lovely until the university defines the whole person as an account number with legs.

Proof arrives in students’ inboxes, courtesy of the Residence Life Office acting as the Bursar’s unofficial collections wing. The message doesn’t offer pastoral guidance or educational support.

It delivers a warning with bureaucratic politeness sharpened into a blade.

“We are reaching out to you today as their office has been trying to connect with you regarding your outstanding balance,” says an email sent to students by Residence Life. “Unfortunately, if their office doesn’t hear from you by Wednesday, November 5th, access to ID functions will be removed. This includes access to your residence hall and meal plan until action is taken.”

Truly nothing says care for the whole person like threatening to starve and displace one’s student body.

The message tries to soften itself — “The expectation isn’t necessarily to have your balance paid off entirely by Wednesday, November 5th but to have an approved plan in place for paying the outstanding balance.”

In other words, the university isn’t demanding full payment, just complete and immediate obedience. Submit the Action Plan, sacrifice a goat, interpret a spreadsheet of finances at dawn and perhaps the door to your residence hall will greet you with a green light instead of a punitive denial beep. 

Jesuit values in action.

Students who received the email were launched into an impromptu demonstration of Loyola’s commitment to mental health. Not through resources, of course, but through the kind of panic only a threatened housing lockout can provide.

Students began questioning “Which friend has a couch?” and “Will I be homeless?” and “Who will believe me when I say the Bursar turned off my identity?” 

This is the emotional reality of Loyola unseen by the glossy marketing materials — the scramble to imagine worst-case scenarios, the quiet dread of how one unread email could mean a student standing outside a locked residence hall while their stomach rumbles, unsure of where their next meal comes from. 

The timing is impeccable. Chicago winter — a season humbling the most pious — is when Loyola decides to tighten the screws. As students trudge through slush and wind peeling skin, SNAP benefits being cut, grocery prices climbing and warmth becoming luxury. To choose now to restrict access and enforce financial holds is poetic in its cruelty. Loyola looked at the forecast and thought, perfect conditions for policy enforcement. 

Loyola’s devotion to cura personalis seems to end exactly where a student’s unpaid balance begins. It’s impressive how quickly the university shifts from pastoral language to the vocabulary of corporate collections. “Outstanding balance.” “Action must be taken.” “Access will be removed.”

The only missing part is a line assuring students “this email may be monitored for quality assurance.”  

The school’s identity slips in these moments. The Jesuit masks falls off the corporate face, revealing  a familiar truth — a billing department using the psychological leverage of hunger and shelter. 

Other Jesuit institutions also deal with late balances, but most avoid threatening to shut off food access like a cable package. Loyola, however, has embraced this technique with the enthusiasm usually reserved for basketball games and donor galas. 

Boston College offers interest-free payment plans and frames its billing office around “courtesy and compassion” according to their website. Le Moyne College maintains emergency “Jesuit funds” for sudden housing or food crises. 

Loyola could have automatic short-term meal and housing support when an account flags, warm handoffs to financial aid or counseling, payment-plan enrollment pausing punitive holds and simple ways for families to submit payments. 

Yet, somewhere in Loyola’s administrative realm, someone seems to believe the ideal way to teach responsibility is to weaponize the ID card.

Loyola can host meditation nights, wellness fairs and Instagram infographics about self-care, but none of which cancel out the existential dread triggered by a sentence — “Your residence hall and meal plan will be inaccessible.” Students can’t downward-dog their way out of that one.

When a university’s approach to financial responsibility triggers panic spirals, the institution isn’t practicing care for the whole person — it’s manufacturing anxiety and calling it policy.

There’s a tragicomic gap between Loyola’s official identity and its operational behavior. If the university’s philosophy centers students as human beings rather than financial ledgers, the email wouldn’t fear-monger its receivers. It would offer support, clarity, extended guidance or at the very least, politics not hinging on the threat of homelessness. 

The university’s tone deafness keeps pace with an economy pretending not to be on life support, mirroring a national economy insisting it’s growing, though most of its citizens can’t seem to afford the proof.

The question isn’t whether Loyola lives up to its Jesuit mission. The question is how the institution manages to recite it with a straight face. Saint Ignatius emphasized compassion, reflection, generosity and dignity. Loyola’s billing operations emphasize deadlines, shutdowns and a deeply ironic interpretation of “care.” 

It’s not radical to expect a Jesuit university to behave like one. If Loyola wants to fully embody the Jesuit values with no exceptions, it must decide whether cura personalis refers to the person or the American dollar. At the moment, the message is clear — the university will care for the whole person, provided the person’s balance clears.

Loyola the educator becomes Loyola the collector. Loyola the community becomes Loyola the creditor. Loyola the Jesuit institution becomes Loyola Accounts Receivable.

Until then, students can look forward to more inspirational statements, more Ignatian Month celebrations, and when finances slip, more emails reminding them nothing nourishes the soul quite like the fear of losing access to dinner.