Another Endangered Russian Program

[Sibelan Forrester]

Dear Proponents of Slavic Languages,

I received this message a few days ago from an undergraduate student at
Kalamazoo College, who would appreciate it very much if professors and
other interested parties would write to protest what sounds like a
poorly-managed decision to cut the Russian program there.  (Yes, it's the
same place where Robin Bisha was teaching History.)
The useful e-mail addresses are at the bottom of the message.
Thank you for your time and attention.

Sibelan Forrester
Modern L & L, Swarthmore College

******
Our administration has taken a rather Ross Perot stand towards the Russian
program.  They keep saying "Oh, we have it," then the next week "Oh no,
we're cutting it."  Then a month later they say "Well, Russian's back
again."  It's all be very confusing.  Our previous president and provost
left the school in June of 1996.  In February of 1997 we were told that
Russian would be cut in September 1997, because of a decision made in
August 1995.  At that time, all the students affected, including myself,
were not in school--we were on our summer break.  When we got back, we
found out about this and saw the Provost, who reversed the decision, and
said _nothing_ about it being just for one year.  The interest in Russian
language and literatue has been strong here and rising over the past few
years, especially since we claim to be an "international school."  Two
other students and I are supposed to be earning a minor in Russian, yet we
can't complete it due to the cutting of all these courses.  The current
president says that he cannot reverse a decision made by his predecessor.
However, none of us knew of this "decision" until last February -- not the
foreign language chair, or the Russian teacher, the interim provost, or the
students (espcially those most affected by it).  It has been very
frustrating because some of the students who came here expecting to minor
in Russian are now finding that they can't.  Our teacher is Joe Baird.
Email can be sent to the President, James Jones at <jjones at kzoo.edu>, to
the new Provost Greg Mahler (<gmahler at kzoo.edu>) or the Chair of Foreign
Languages, Joe Fugate (<jfugate at kzoo.edu>).

Thank you so much for your help in all of this!