March 15, 2023
Today we, our Department of Language and Literature, meet with the provost and interim dean. We were called into this meeting in a calendar appointment email, sent during Spring Break last week, without any agenda or topic or description for the meeting. Upon a request by our department chair we learned from the provost’s secretary that the purpose for the meeting was a discussion of the “evaluation and elimination of programs” in our department.
We shouldn’t read too much into the impersonal delivery or the laconic nature of the message; current technological tools and practices have a way of dictating much these days in the nature of our interactions and communications. So, the defects in the style and substance of the invitation may stem from the limitations of the scheduling software. But there have been breakdowns in our ways of relating at SXU, particularly between faculty and administrators. Arguably the mysteriousness, brusqueness, and emptiness of the invitation are symptomatic of deficiencies in our relationship.
Many in the department, and in other CAS departments, have anticipated that programs will be cut. There has been signaling of such moves. Talk of “data,” numbers of majors, national trends, student demand, and the like, has pushed a narrative and fanned fears that we are not meeting certain benchmarks.
Aside from the merits, the true or false bases of the facts and claims of such discussion, I lament the tension surrounding the whole dynamic here. I fear our discussion will trigger each of us involved in ways that will activate agendas and aggravate past grievances and new fears about current trajectories. Speeches will be made. We will be told about the need to take into account market forces and declines in the humanities—not only at SXU, but across the higher education landscape, as chronicled in the previous post on “The End of the English Major.” Defenses will be made; rabbit holes will be entered.
I want to argue for a win-win, a compromise that will bring in majors in multiple programs that synergistically support one another—English education, English, Spanish, and Spanish education with course listings that draw from all four groups, providing full and diverse classes economically.
I struggle to push the pragmatist line of thought, fearing that, as many have argued, the decision is in, fait accompli, don’t waste your breath. We do seem to have a large enough number of majors—nearly 100 between English and Spanish—certainly enough students to justify our continued existence, even if adjustments are needed. But if a closure decision is already settled upon, any number could be offset or recontextualized—explained away. Is any persuasion possible?
With the new provost and with the interim dean, who is our former colleague, there are minefields. How do we navigate? I want us to avail ourselves of our transitional moment. The departure of President Joyner opens the possibility of new modes of communicating and interacting. Will we turn the page? Will we be able to avoid the personal attacks and negativity—on both sides—that we seem inevitably drawn into in the climate that has festered under the departing president?
I have longed for a time when we all could be pulling together, in the same direction. What would proper program planning look like? I want to advise against facile citing of data tropes. The data are useless when they are employed casuistically, as many of us have judged to be the case. There are so many bases upon which competing courses of action may be advocated, defended, or torn down. ‘Twas always thus: it’s all arbitrary, the rationales and bases for them that we employ; “there are lies, damned lies, and statistics.” Or data. We need some level of trust in order to get to that point where we realize, forgive, and step aside from the arbitrariness.
As we look to the future, let us be cognizant of nuance—of trends that, were they given a critical component of support at the right time, could have developed, rather than fizzling out.
Our English Ed program has been growing the past few years, after sinking, post-2008, to its lowest ebb. It has been growing despite the institutional stress of the past 8 years; the loss of faculty; the institution’s precipitous disinvestment in its academic mission; and the near-complete neglect, by all, of program promotion, marketing, and recruitment. With a little vision and commitment, how far might all our programs—not only the education ones—grow and thrive?
I need to ask the provost: Is there room for discussion on program closure decisions? Is there a willingness to recalculate the data so as to envision new (or old) efficiencies? Or are we locked into a death march of program closures—whether that course be pursued for defensible reasons of market trends, performance, capacity, and mission, or for suspect reasons of bias, vengeance, and ignorance?