Kate Santini ’27 and Amelia Ciarleglio ’27
Co-Editors-in-Chief
Each month, The Spire has the opportunity to sit down with College of the Holy Cross President Vincent Rougeau to discuss any major changes and popular topics on campus. Like students who have finally had the chance to settle into their classes and campus life, Rougeau can not wait to attend the annual fall semester events including exciting football games and crowded tailgates.
When asked about his favorite fall tradition, Rougeau said, “I am looking forward, in particular, to homecoming this year. It’s just a great opportunity to see alumni and families of our students, friends of the college, and people returning to campus.” Homecoming weekend, which this year is taking place from Oct. 23 to Oct. 25, “reminds me of what makes the community so special [and] connected with people who are engaged with the College in all kinds of different ways.”
During this year’s Homecoming, the Holy Cross Football team will be going head to head with the Bucknell Bison. “Of course, it’s always fun to have a football game where there are a lot of people in the stands,” Rougeau added. “But it’s also just a great time of year.” As the leaves turn on Mt. Saint James, there are so many fall festivities to participate in including the annual Halloween Charity 5K Run, apple picking, and even the Healy Haunted House.
This fall, Rougeau is also looking forward to taking a trip overseas to Cambridge University in the United Kingdom, where he will give a talk, meet international colleagues, and have the opportunity to speak with Holy Cross students currently studying abroad in England.
Additionally, Rougeau emphasized that the College is thrilled to be “welcoming two renowned authors, R.F. Kuang and Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah who are going to join our faculty as distinguished writers in the English department,” Rougeau said. Kuang and Adjei-Brenyah will be teaching Creative Writing classes at the College, presenting “an incredibly exciting opportunity for students to learn from people who are actually engaged in the craft [and are] being published.”
Kuang is a Chinese-American writer known for her popular novels Babel (2022), The Poppy War trilogy (2018), Katabasis (2025), and others. While she mostly writes fantasy, she has more recently broken into the literary fiction genre. Adjei-Brenyah, on the other hand, is a Black American author known for his works Chain-Gang All-Stars (2023) and Friday Black (2018), which both shed light on and critique systemic racism and injustice in America.
“We have such an excellent English department, and they offer so many different ways for students to engage with the field,” Rougeau said. “This is a new addition to that where we have active writers or novelists who are going to join that community and be a part of the learning experience for our students.”
Rougeau added that the College is also welcoming the new Vice President of Student Development, Koren Bakkegard, to the faculty.
“She’s bringing some wonderful experience to the college from a number of different institutions where she’s been previously, but I think she’s just an incredibly thoughtful, warm person. I know the students are going to enjoy getting to know her better,” he said.
This past summer, Rougeau had the opportunity to visit Rome and meet Pope Leo XIV alongside fellow presidents of Jesuit and Catholic colleges. Invited to reflect on this experience, Rougeau said that “to build community with the other presidents was very profound for me.”
He also relayed his excitement at learning that he is distantly related to the Pope. “Turns out that we’re both descendants of this one family in Louisiana,” Rougeau remarked with incredulity.
Rougeau also expressed his gratitude for “being in his presence and hearing his message, which really focused on the vital role that Jesuit education plays in informing young people in a hopeful future in seeking the truth and serving the common good.”
“The other thing that really struck me [was that] we’re a part of this global institution…When you’re at the Vatican, you see people from every corner of the world and [the experience] just renewed me in an important way,” Rougeau said.
The president also confirmed rumors of a new residence hall being built between Figge Hall and the Prior Performing Arts Center. He explained that the College is still in the “preliminary process” of developing a new residence hall that will double as a “living, learning community” that will include classrooms, recreational, and study spaces.
“The earliest possible date that we could begin preparing the site would probably be in the summer of 2027, but that’s [only if] everything falls into place,” Rougeau said, explaining that the College is still waiting on confirmation from donors and planning support.
Lastly, Rougeau addressed the controversy surrounding the recent launch of the College’s in-house AI platform, SuarezAI.
“We’re trying to make sure that students learn about the benefits and costs of AI…[and] the model we’re trying to use with Suarez is designed to help reduce its environmental impact while allowing us to measure how it’s being used,” Rougeau said.
He explained that the College is actively pursuing the goal of being carbon neutral by 2040 and that it is looking into “more energy-efficient types of hardware” to adopt in the future.
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