Birmingham-Southern students want answers after learning, for a second time, that their school may close.

After months of lobbying and legislative requests, Gov. Kay Ivey approved a loan program this summer that was intended to keep the 167-year-old private liberal arts school afloat until it could replenish its endowment. Public and private colleges could apply for $30 million of funding through the program – just enough, officials estimated, to keep the lights on at BSC for another year.

But in an unexpected turn of events last month, Boozer denied the loan, claiming the college posed a “terrible credit risk” and compared the school’s standing to a “junk bond.”

Birmingham-Southern officials sued the treasurer, but a judge recently dismissed the case.

“I was just frozen. I couldn’t believe it. I thought we were over this,” said Reed Martinson, a senior who said he got the news through a group chat.

In a message to students Thursday morning, BSC President Daniel Coleman said officials are weighing “new potential sources of funding” and continuing to assess their options day by day.

But students – many of whom have made countless calls and emails to lawmakers over the past year – are also taking their efforts a step further. Several, including Martinson, made their way to Montgomery Friday morning to attempt to talk with Boozer directly.

“It’s pretty tragic,” said Martinson, who helped coordinate the effort. “You’ve got international students who are on student visas that might have to go back and not be able to finish out their education. There’s a lot of people that are going to be drastically affected. People are taking out student loans, all of that.”

With just a few classes left to take before graduation, some seniors feel particularly stuck.

Martinson, for one, is just two courses away from getting his degree – and worries it’ll be hard to convince other colleges to take him in with so many credits already on his transcript.

“I feel like I’m in quicksand,” said Daniel Johnson, another student organizer who is also a senior. “It’s like I had my chance to get out, but now I’m in too deep.”

After news of the potential closure broke last year, Johnson and most of his peers submitted at least one transfer application to another school. Johnson applied to four.

One school even gave him a scholarship offer that matched his current aid at Birmingham-Southern. But he turned it down.

“I was like, you know what? I love BSC too much, I’ll stay. Because I saw the plan and I’m confident in Daniel Coleman and his team,” he said. “And now that I may potentially have to go back two years and not get my degree, I’m feeling upset, I’m angry and I’m just lacking confidence now.”

Johnson said he was looking forward to finally crossing the finish line at BSC. He’s already planned his graduation and was starting to apply to graduate school. But now he’s wondering if he’ll have to put those plans on hold.

“The sooner the better is what some of us are thinking right now,” he said, noting potential plans to transfer again. “Like, I can’t do this to myself, no matter how much I love BSC. I’ve got to put myself first.”

Student athletes like Martinson are also worried about what a closure could mean for eligibility.

Martinson is on the tennis team – a spring sport – and on his next-to-last semester of eligibility, which means he may no longer be able to play if the school closes in December.

And like Johnson, he’s on an academic scholarship that will be tough to transfer over.

“I’ve put in the work and I’m so close to the finish line, and if this place shuts down in December, there is a strong possibility that I’m going to have to stay in college for two more years, which is going to delay me getting a degree, it’s going to delay me getting out into the workforce and making my own money and starting my own life,” he said.

At the start of school, he said, there was a “buzz” of relief and excitement felt across campus, Martinson said.

He hopes the school can get back to that feeling again.

“Mentally, we’re all very drained. We thought we were over this and it’s been kind of sad to see how people have reacted to the rug being pulled out from underneath us out of nowhere after we thought it was all done,” he said. “But as a cohort we’ll get through it the same way we did last year and hopefully we can prevail again.”