SUNY-Albany

[George Kalbouss]

I've been following the enthusiastic support for the program at SUNY-Albany, and -- if I may -- make a
few suggestions to the effort.

(1)  The SUNY faculty should study carefully the rules and regulations of their university.  In many instances,
the administrators themselves do not know their own rules, or hope that the faculty won't study them.  It might
be a lot more difficult to get rid of a program that one would think.

(2)  The administrators know full well the virtues of Russian, the other foreign languages, etc., they are responding
more to other issues:  economic, political, etc., so the likelihood of them "seeing the light," are nil.   None of them are
suddenly going to say, "you know, you're right, and we're keeping Russian!"

(3)  Thank goodness, State Universities are superficially funded and at least benignly run by the State Legislature.  This means
that the most important forces to help sway a decision at SUNY should come from SEELANG colleagues who are residents
of New York State.  Each should write a letter to her/his State Senator and Assemblyman.  Timing is optimum, this
is election time,  a letter to the opponent is equally valuable here.  Ditto the Governor candidates.

(4)  Even better is the "rule of three."  If an elected official gets three letters from three different constituents, this is better than one.
One letter could be a crank, two a coincidence, but three -- this needs to be considered important.

(5)  As scholars of Russian culture, we should remember that administrators work in a hierarchy, just as
they did in 19th century Russia and the Soviet Union.  There is always someone above each and 
every one of them.  Never write to the administrator directly,  write to his superiors, and copy him.
This communicates that you realize that the administrator will now have to start explaining as well to his superiors.
When writing to the politicians, always copy the Chm, Board of Trustees, President, etc.  When all is said and done,
Gogol still lives!

(6)  Most important, and forgive my deference to Tolstoy, you have to "want" to win.  

George Kalbouss
Assoc. Prof (Emeritus)
The Ohio State University

	


On Oct 14, 2010, at 1:49 PM, Katya Hokanson wrote:

> Dear Prof. Arndt,
> 
> Thanks so much for the snail mail addresses -- our Russian and East European Studies program at the University of Oregon is in the process of sending letters to those addresses.
> 
> If anyone who is knowledgeable about each situation has written letters to Howard University and Louisiana State, could you please make them (and appropriate addresses) available as well?  It is helpful to have an informed basis on which to write one's own institutional letter.
> 
> Thank you,
> 
> Katya Hokanson
> Russian and East European Studies
> University of Oregon
> 
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