Following example of English Department, all chairs must inform students of changes to their major

This Thursday, Feb. 11, at 7 p.m., the English Department is holding an open meeting on the future of their curriculum in Sanders Classroom's Spitzer Auditorium. The purpose of the meeting is to inform English majors—and any other interested students—of the faculty and curriculum changes being made in the English Department for the 2010-2011 academic year. Due to the wishes of some English faculty members whose contracts were not renewed for next year, the Department will not release a complete list of the names of professors not returning to Vassar. Nonetheless, this meeting is an opportunity for the Department to communicate with those students who will be most affected by the changes.

The Miscellany News believes that this meeting is an ideal example of the communication that needs to occur, in all of the College's departments, between department faculty and those students—majors, correlates and others—who are directly invested in each department's future.

The student response to the faculty cuts announced last December has been characterized by frustration over the lack of information available to students. While the administration has announced that several faculty members will not have their contracts renewed for the 2010-2011 academic year, information about which faculty members have been cut and how these cuts will affect Vassar's curriculum has not been released—the administration has left the release of this information to the discretion of individual departments. The Miscellany News strongly supports this decision, as it allows professors who may be leaving the College to maintain an appropriate level of privacy, and it gives departments the opportunity to have a constructive, direct conversation about the future of their curricula with the students who are most affected by the changes. We urge all departments to have this conversation and inform their majors and correlates of the changes that will be made.

Some departments have already been having such discussions. The Religion Department, for example, released the names of the two affected adjunct Religion professors to majors soon after the Chair himself received news of the changes to his Department. In addition, the Religion Department plans to meet with majors in the coming weeks to discuss the curricular changes. The Environmental Studies Program will also be holding an open discussion on the program's future next Wednesday, Feb. 17, and as stated before, at Thursday's English Department meeting, Department Chair and Associate Professor of English Peter Antelyes will address why certain faculty reductions were necessary and how these reductions were implemented. Antelyes also told the Miscellany that "we will definitely be detailing which [course] offerings have been cut" ("College has no plans to release the names of cut faculty members," 2.4.10). As a result of these meetings, students in the English and Religion Departments and the Environmental Studies Program will have more concrete information that can inform their discussions of curricular changes.

While we understand that students cannot be directly involved in important curricular decision-making processes, they should still be made aware of these decisions in a timely, appropriate and clear way. Other departments should fulfill these student needs by openly discussing changes with the students who are invested in their curricula, following the lead of the English and Religion Departments and the Environmental Studies Program. Large and small, affected and unaffected, all departments need to openly discuss changes, or lack of changes, with students. Students, in turn, must take advantage of these opportunities. If such opportunities do not yet exist, we urge students to ask department chairs and program directors to organize such meetings.

Large departments could follow the model of smaller multidisciplinary programs, which hold regular meetings with their majors. While larger Departments could not regularly hold Department-wide meetings, they could take advantage of their Majors Committees for regular discussions, or, as the English Department is doing, hold one meeting at the beginning of each semester.

We realize that changes to Vassar's curricula are still evolving, and that this past year has been a trial period in which all members of the community—students, professors and administrators—are grappling with how best to respond to these reductions. We at The Miscellany News believe that the English Department meeting this Thursday provides an apt option for English students to become informed in a setting that allows them to immediately have their questions answered. We urge that other departments look to this model and recognize that they, not the administration, are now responsible for providing students with a clear picture of future of their education.

—The Staff Editorial reflects the opinion of at least two-thirds of the 20-member Editorial Board.