By Tristan Weisenbach and Alena Bitonti
Managing Editor and Features Editor
One cost-saving initiative touted by Interim President Michael Bernstein as part of his LIONS plan involves seeking ways to modify the foreign language requirement for students. Bernstein has addressed this re-evaluation multiple times in his monthly email updates about the plan.
While there is currently no specific plan in place for what the new requirements could look like — or any publicized formal recommendation from the LIONS plan core curriculum working group — The Signal has obtained a potential plan that is supported by the College’s World Languages and Cultures Department that would save about $110,000 by standardizing world language requirements for all departments that require it.
The measure, developed by Dean of the School of Humanities and Social Sciences Lisa Grimm, includes matching foreign language requirements for students of all majors that require it — 45% of students and 38% of programs — with the current requirements of the Departments of Math, Computer Science and Chemistry: “Two semesters of language beyond where [a] student places on the placement test (not to exceed the 103 level — or 152 level for intensive languages).”
This proposal has not yet been made public or been approved by the Committee on Academic Policies or the Steering Committee, according to Marimar Huguet Jerez, department chair of World Languages and Culture, so it is not guaranteed to be implemented.
Huguet Jerez said that faculty in her department feel “horrible,” “angry” and “in despair” that the College’s grim financial situation has forced the need for any budget-reducing changes to the foreign language program to be taken.
“By cutting the language requirement, we are not doing our students a good service at all,” Huguet Jerez said. “That is a prestige that this institution is going to lose and good classes that our students are going to need — needed material, needed academics that the students are going to lose.”
Ann Warner-Ault, associate professor of Spanish, said she is concerned about the implications of cutting too much from their department. She explained that New Jersey is one of the most diverse states in the nation, which makes the department so crucial for cultural representation.
“We don't have a Latino studies program,” Warner-Ault said. “We don't have an Asian studies program. So our department is doing the job of those types of programs that don't exist otherwise, and so I am worried about what would happen if we were to be cut further back.”
Because Huguet Jerez feels that some academic departments have largely felt the brunt of the budget cuts so far, she believes there are other areas of the College’s budget that can be reduced instead — in particular, administration.
“I have three articles from three universities where the president's salary was cut by 10%, and that helped pay a lot of the debt,” Huguet Jerez said. “Why don't we do that here?”
Bernstein, however, wrote in his most recent LIONS plan email update that, “Of our permanent budget reductions this past academic year, 75% were implemented in non-academic units and operations.”
Final recommendations from the LIONS plan working groups should be announced in the coming weeks, as final recommendations were due to Interim President Bernstein by May 2. So while there is not yet a set plan regarding what to do about the foreign language requirement, professors in the World Languages and Cultures Department believe that their proposal is the best way forward.
“I think that all the kids that want to take language would still be able to and it wouldn't kill any of the languages,” said Warner-Ault. “We'd still be able to offer all the languages that we offer, so I think we're all on board with that idea. I understand that kids want flexibility and I don't want them to feel like they're being forced to take classes that they don't want to take.”
