Off With Their Heads!

It's been a while since I've blogged about something of substance. One could argue that I've indeed, never really blogged about anything of substance, and that the premise of blogging is, by nature not substantial!

Alas, here I am, again, writing.

I am a student at Temple University in Philadelphia, about to be greatly impacted by Gov. Corbett's budget cuts to public education.  The school, (more specifically the Dean of College of Liberal Arts) has taken preemptive action to reduce spending. Great idea, but terrible ramifications. They decided to reduce spending by nearly 20 grand by eliminating the department heads of many of the programs of the liberal arts, and re-shuffle the programs under already existing programs (i.e. Women's Studies will now fall under Sociology).  There are many, many, many problems with this (and the way they implemented it), chiefly that none of the department heads were consulted.  Also, they were cut before the new budgetary design had been drafted.  (Hence preemptive) 

The two largest issues that the students in these programs will now face are a significant loss in assistance with their academic progression in these fields, as well as predictable losses in the number of courses offered in the  affected programs.

Among the programs to be re-structured/maimed in the process: American Studies, Women's Studies, LGBT Studies, Jewish Studies, Asian Studies, among others.  The irony inherent here, is, in case you haven't noticed, these are programs traditionally associated with discrimination, oppression, and adversity.  Why should the academics associated with them be any different?!?

The cuts to the programs wouldn't be as "shock and awe," maybe, if all of the schools within Temple University had made similar cuts or "streamlining endeavors."  But they didn't. The science departments made no changes to their programs whatsoever.  There are dozens of programs in the School of Science and Technology that are considered "untouchable" because they are sciences.  By the virtue of being a science program, they are able to apply for grants to do research and bring the university money.  The arts, however, are not as fiscally virtuous, and therefore become another notch in the bedpost of capitalist casualties.  This reinforces the false notion that the science programs are more useful than the arts, especially the humanities. 

Are they? Of course not.  Just because someone's life was saved by a chemical compound, doesn't mean that the quality of that life wasn't equally saved by discovering queer culture, or Jewish studies. Or any other humanities niche. It is thinking in terms of the discriminatory sweeping generalizations that tends to get us into trouble!  It is time to accept and promote academic diversity instead of feeding into the corporate university eugenics of the arts.


There is very little coverage of this, so here are the links I could find.

http://philadelphia.cbslocal.com/2011/03/08/temple-u-head-urges-public-response-to-corbetts-education-budget-cuts/

http://www.philly.com/philly/news/pennsylvania/119232609.html

 Get involved. Act up. Use your free speech that has been fought for! If you pay to go to school, it SHOULD be up to you to study whatever you want to.