While millions of teenagers leave home for college this August, illustrator Brittney Mallon will share a modest home in Monmouth County, New Jersey, with her parents and two older siblings.

Mallon wears a pain-relieving brace on her right knee, a relic from her days as a competitive point guard in high school basketball. She will wear the brace daily, on the long walks that will make up much of her commute to Midtown Manhattan and back. And much of the money Mallon earns next school year will disappear an hour’s drive south in a South Jersey apartment she may never see again.

“I hope I feel better,” Mallon said.

She tries very hard to be a good athlete.

For better or worse, Mallon is still grappling with the sudden closure of the University of the Arts in early June. Students, faculty and all but 30 UArts staff members are in the same boat—suddenly losing income and years of study when their school closed amid an unclear “financial crisis.”

UArts’ financial problems came into even greater focus on July 18, when university attorney Kristine Grady Derewicz took on attorneys for the university’s former staff in a class-action lawsuit in federal court. The plaintiffs, led by members of the United Academics of Philadelphia union, accused their former employer of violating the WARN Act, a 1988 federal law that regulates the closure of large workplaces.

Derewicz told U.S. District Judge Chad Kenney that the school plans to pay former employees 60 days’ pay, as required by the law under which faculty and staff filed suit. But the private creative academy isn’t yet sure how it will do that – or whether it has enough money to do so, Derewicz said.

Kenney and lawyers for both sides agreed to appear in court again in mid-August. Not that UArts officials won’t have a look at the judge’s bench before then: union representatives accused those responsible of further violations on July 15, opening the door for further lawsuits in the coming weeks.

Nearly every institution in the region has shown interest in the newly dispersed student body. Several schools opened transfer portals to quickly add students to their own ranks, and Bennington College in Vermont raised $1.3 million to take over UArts’ dance conservatory – a deal that could bring five professors and as many as 50 students to the community, according to the New York Times.

But Temple is publicly trying to save the rest. A university spokesperson told The Temple News in June that officials are “looking at all options,” and Mitch Morgan, chairman of the board of trustees, said that includes a possible merger in which Temple would give the buildings south of City Hall to UArts and perhaps even take on some of the university’s programs and staff.

Talks are ongoing, and former faculty members inspected parts of the UArts campus in early July, according to testimony from officials with Temple University’s fire marshal. But Bradley Philbert, a former UArts professor who negotiated the contract between UAP and the university as vice president of the union, has long warned against agreements that cover only part of what he sees as a single community.

“Any real merger would mean keeping the university together,” Philbert said.

In that case, Philbert said, UAP would have the right to participate in discussions between Temple and UArts.

Jeffrey Doshna, a professor of urban planning at the Tyler School of Art and Architecture and president of Temple University’s Association of University Professionals, issued a stark warning: Not everyone was privy to the merger talks from the beginning, which he said reflected the dynamics surrounding UArts’ collapse.

“I know it’s summer,” Doshna said. “I know some people have checked out. But if you sent out a message and said, ‘These are the meetings, these are the conversations that are happening,’ I think we would have been there.”

Doshna also said a successful unification would require an open process that would involve Temple’s neighbors in North Philadelphia – and its potential neighbors further south – as well as any administrator or trustee.

Due to non-disclosure agreements, a common precaution in mergers and acquisitions, many details of the merger remain secret, Philbert noted outside the courthouse. Still, Doshna believes the communities of both schools should be kept informed of developments in the merger talks.

“It can’t just be about the real estate in Center City and the students there,” Doshna said. “Faculty and staff also need to be part of this discussion.”

A Temple spokesperson referred to previous press releases about the evolving relationship with UArts in a request for comment. For now, Temple remains focused on students – specifically, ensuring they can complete their education without having their path to graduation delayed or derailed.

Tyler Dean Susan Cahan explained the new transfer process in a conversation with The Temple News in early July. Cahan explained how a teaching agreement works to enable as many UArts students as possible to complete their courses on time.

Admissions officers reviewed each student’s records to see what courses they had taken and whether there were parallel courses and majors at Tyler. If a student’s previous studies were a good enough match with Tyler’s programs to enable them to graduate on time, the admissions team said so and welcomed them, Cahan said. But she added that Temple didn’t make promises it couldn’t keep.

“There were actually quite a few programs that some art and architecture schools offered that we didn’t offer,” Cahan said. “When that was the case, we didn’t raise our hand and say, ‘Come here.'”

Cahan cited animation and game design as examples – degrees that students can earn at UArts that are not offered at Temple University.

Tyler isn’t the only Temple college welcoming many of the UArts transfers, Cahan said. The College of Liberal Arts could accommodate creative writing, for example, and Temple’s in-house film school could serve as a haven for their South Broad counterparts.

Tyler even managed to speed up the creation of a new degree program when they learned that some students had taken similar courses at UArts, Cahan said. Over the summer, the school announced it planned to offer a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Illustration and Emerging Media.

Mallon, the student from North Jersey, considered transferring to Temple when she saw she could finish her illustration degree there. But she needed to learn more about Tyler’s version of the program – the facilities and the type of work she could do once she got there. A visit to the school’s website turned up nothing.

“I couldn’t find any information about it because it was so new,” Mallon said.

Mallon’s parents topped up their budget to support her through her first three years, she says. Still, she needed scholarships, grants, part-time jobs and debt to cover her expenses, and much of the extra help she received disappeared when UArts closed.

Without this lifeline, Mallon was more worried than ever about whether she would be able to find permanent employment once she had her gown and hat.

“I really need to have a productive senior year to make sure I get a job after I graduate because I have such high debt,” she said.

Mallon toured Manhattan’s School for the Visual Arts and saw what it had to offer and was confident she could complete her degree. And more importantly, she believed a year among New York’s artists at SVA could broaden her horizons beyond graduation.

“I try to make the most of the opportunities that come my way,” Mallon said.

Historian Tara Westover, who made her own foray into higher education in the mountains of Idaho and produced the bestselling memoir “Educated,” once wrote about the financial stressors of college in a New York Times essay. Financial aid checks, Westover said, changed her life — from the kinds of jobs she took near Brigham Young University to the courses she chose to her sleep schedule.

By getting her finances in order, Westover was able to “experience the greatest benefit of money, which is the ability to think of things other than money.”

Mallon’s journey to UArts might feel extraordinary, too. Losing her institution set off a chain reaction that threatens her financial income, physical comfort and privacy. She’s not alone: ​​Music production teacher Rick Rein talked about saying “yes to literally everything” to make ends meet. And Philbert had to put planning for his upcoming wedding on hold.

So Cahan reflected on the loss as she spoke of Temple’s gain. What would she specifically say to those who wondered if their community was destroyed forever? The dean was silent for a moment, then crossed her legs as she sat down in one of the conference room’s wide-backed swivel chairs.

“I wouldn’t try to talk them out of that feeling,” she said, gently breaking the silence. “The students lost something — and Philadelphia lost something important — with the closing of UArts.”