7 May 2010: At the Wells faculty and trustee meeting students stood outside to witness. A student petition to meet with trustees that was signed by 364 students (in a college of about 500 students) was denied. A faculty member read the student petition to the Board of Trustees. Faculty and Staff also wrote and signed resolutions and petitions which were also read to the BOT. All who signed (and many who are too vulnerable to sign because they could lose their jobs) agree that the process of "restructuring" has been exclusive with a complete lack of transparency. There is both an economic and a governance crisis here.
Student petition = 364 signatures
Staff petition = 51 signatures
Faculty resolution = 39 signatures
= 454 signatures in a college community of 700 people
Is anyone listening?
Click here for the article that appeared in the Syracuse Post Standard
"Wells Faculty Cry Foul," Article in Inside Higher Education
Part of what I do as a teacher is summarize information using visuals, such as the one above. I think this diagram clearly shows that the academic program has been kicked to the bottom of priorities by the Administration. The academic program has been displaced by four new initiatives that will cost hundreds of thousands of dollars at the same time that staff and faculty are being cut. Somehow we are supposed to believe that these initiatives with a gutted academic program and tuition set at $43,000 will bring in more students. Where is the plan? Where is the vision?
The Office of Institutional Diversity (OID) has been eliminated. OID was an important initiative that many of us worked for years to bring to life. After the departure of Steve Gilchrist, the first and only Director of OID for three years, the Administration let the OID disappear. Diversity at Wells? Don't bother going to the website, none of it is true any longer. Diversity as an institutional priority no longer exists at Wells. This Administration is completely white, middle-class, gender normative, and heterosexual and there is not a soul on campus who thinks anyone in the Administration knows how to be an ally to LGBTQ people or people of color. Let me repeat; there are no allies in the Administration. Individual faculty and staff have had to work overtime to support students who are victimized by homophobia and racism on campus. But I also have to say that many White students report a complete breakdown in support systems overall. They, too, want diversity.
Let's see, where are we going?
The Business and Liberal Arts Center seems to be the designated silver bullet because apparently according to some statistic somewhere 20% of college students are interested in Business. But why would someone interested in learning good business practices come to a place that can't seem to pay its bills and has no interest in diversity? Still waiting on an answer to that one.
Just a few thoughts on the academic program. These two words sound cold and technical so I want to put some other words around what academic program means to me. The academic program comprises; the staff, faculty, and students -- it is the heart of the college because it is everyone who teaches and learns together. It is all the courses that we teach. And it is all the staff, who are frequently also mentors and teachers -- think Librarians, think Technicians, think Administrative Assistants, think Security, think House Keepers, think Off-Campus Study, think Coaches, think Dining Hall, think of the beauty of the land and the Grounds keepers -- all the folks who don't stand or sit in classrooms, but without whose support the curriculum couldn't take shape. The academic program is the heart of a college.
The academic program supports the vision and mission of Wells. We are the faculty and staff that do what we do so that what students learn adds up to something meaningful when students graduate. It is not something thrown together, but a program designed by people who know what they are talking about because we are experts in our fields. Look at the photo of students above; they are part of this thing called the academic program.
As the Administration of the college slashes 1.5 million out of the budget through processes which remain exclusive and lack any semblance of transparency, they are damaging, perhaps destroying, not just an abstraction called, "the academic program." They are damaging the relationships between people in this community that make the academic program possible.
With a sad heart, I have to write that none of these so-called new initiatives build relationships with the academic program. They don't build relationships with us or among us.
The academic program is the heart of Wells College and it is being kicked to the curb. Why would a college do that? Why would a college take out its own heart? How can a place think it can survive that way?
I'll end here for now with a poem that Bill Ayers sent the membership of the American Educational Research Association Curriculum Studies email list because it illustrates what the academic program can be:
*One Heart*
Look at the birds. Even flying
is born
out of nothing. The first sky
is inside you, open
at either end of day.
The work of wings
was always freedom, fastening
one heart to every falling thing.
*Li-Young Lee*
And then there is the cynical cartoon version:
