1 March 2000

BUDGET CUTS AT WORK

The decision to close the Department of Consumer Studies is deeply distressing -- not only because it terminates a vital major with highly employable graduates, but also because of the way the administration has disregarded faculty governance in implementing it.

A thriving program with 316 undergraduate majors, Consumer Studies serves a predominantly female population (98.5%), and a significant number of students of color (15%). Its selection as a target, after last year's abrogation of Affirmative Action, reawakens suspicions that women and minorities are being marginalized as the 21st Century University takes shape.

The attack on Consumer Studies provides yet another example of the current strategy for reducing the academic scope (and budget!) of the University deliberately weakening a department by failing to renew its faculty, then declaring it weak, and finally eliminating it. We might call this technique "The self-fulfilling prophecy." The same tactic was used in the demise of the Slavics Department, and is now visible in its interim stages in several other departments, mostly in Humanities and Fine Arts, and in Food and Natural Resources. This stealthy method of closing departments piecemeal makes it impossible for any broad reorganizational plan to be considered and debated by the University community, or submitted for scrutiny to the faculty.

In the case of Consumer Studies, the administration has, at least to this point, failed to comply with established Faculty Senate procedures for closing programs and departments. According to Faculty Senate Document 90064B, "Procedures to be Followed in the Review of Academic Programs Proposed for Termination," the following steps must be taken (designated by the document's section numbers, and heavily abridged):

2.1: "The Provost or a Dean may request a review of an academic program by developing a brief setting forth the reasons why a review is thought to be necessary." The language is fuzzy here, using "may" rather than must. But the department's right to reply is stoutly assured: "The program which is the subject of the enquiry shall be given an opportunity to provide an initial written response..." Consumer Studies was never given this opportunity.

2.2: "After the brief has been developed, and the program's response has been submitted, the Dean shall make the brief and the program's initial response promptly and readily available to all MBU [Major Budgetary Unit] faculty members. The Dean shall then call an MBU faculty meeting for the purpose of discussing the brief and the response, and to ascertain the sentiments and opinions of the MBU faculty relating to the future of the program involved." Jeez, I don't remember being invited to that.

2.3: "The Provost shall review the brief, the response and the summary of the faculty meeting proceedings, and shall determine whether a full review should be initiated... If the Provost determines that a full review is desirable, he or she shall request the Faculty Senate to undertake it." Then "[T]he Academic Priorities Council... shall conduct a full review.…"

In section 2.6, the document provides a 179-day (!) timetable for carrying out this review process. The administration has reached their decision without even getting to day 1.

Faculty Senate Secretary Joseph Larson reports that "The Rules Committee met with the Chancellor and Provost [on February 23]. We stated our concern that closing the major seemed to signal a foregone conclusion that the Department and major were to be eliminated. It made it appear that the procedures established by the Senate and agreed to by the administration in 1991 were simply instructions on how to conduct a funeral."

As the MSP representative to the Academic Priorities Council when this policy was deliberated, I recall quite clearly that the union tried to strengthen these procedures even more, while the administration worked equally hard to weaken them. What the Senate adopted and the administration agreed to was the product of good old democratic compromise -- moderate and reasonable steps to insure fairness and faculty input. In Secretary Larson's words, "This kind of decision merits that care."

The case of Consumer Studies follows Whitmore's blueprint for cutting academic programs. We need to resist, or more departments will fall, one after the other.

David Lenson