THE EMORY WHEEL
OP ED
Tuesday, Sept. 18, 2012
7
JAMES SUNSHINE
Are Emory’s Cuts Necessary? Closed-Door Decisions Harm University Administration, Faculty and Students In 1978, 1,200 students staged a three-day sit-in to protest massive cuts by their university. Their confrontation only ended when the university agreed to establish a more inclusive decision-making process that gave a seat on the board of trustees to one faculty member and one student. The provost advocating the cuts “resigned” later that year. No, this did not happen at Emory. This happened at the University of Pennsylvania where Dean Robin Forman earned his degree in mathematics just three years later. Unfortunately for Emory students and faculty, Dean Forman did not decide to institute the reforms his classmates won for him. On Friday, it was made public that Emory College would phase out its Journalism, Educational Studies, Physical Education and Visual Arts programs. The graduate school also announced that it would be suspending admissions to its Institute of Liberal Arts as well as its Economics, Spanish and Portuguese PhD programs for at least the next five years. The resources from these programs would be reallocated, as Dean Forman puts it, into programs that will help further Emory’s goal of academic eminence. These include, but are not limited to, contemporary studies of China and furthering multimedia programs. These “reallocations” will have major effects on our university. The phasing out of Emory’s PhD program in economics alone will have reverberations that I am not certain Dean Forman has considered (for more information about how one of the largest majors at Emory will be affected, read the Wheel’s article published last Friday). These cuts — explained to the public as being a choice — are not necessary in the immediate term. There is, assuming that the University is in fact not in deficit, no reason for Emory to rush into making these kinds of decisions. The official benefits provided by these “reallocations” also makes no sense. In an earlier interview with the Wheel, Forman stated that the cuts would create “intriguing opportunities by renewing Emory’s commitment to academic eminence.”
Dean Forman watches protests against announced cuts, September 17, 2012
That sounds all fine and good, except I have no idea what that means. And what does the niche study of contemporary China have to do with Emory’s liberal arts mission? Nor have adequate reasons been provided for specific programs being cut. During both his meeting with the Wheel and during a discussion with the current director of the Journalism Program, Hank Klibanoff, Forman emphasized the point that the Journalism Program focuses on preparing students for a particular job in a particular market. Therefore, a program like journalism does not, in his opinion, really mesh with the liberal arts. It is a very rare thing when a university
Graduate Economics: A Needless Casualty BEN LEINER The budget cuts Dean Forman handed down last Friday will have a devastating impact for many undergraduates in Emory College. However, the cut that will hurt all Emory undergraduates the most is one not mentioned in the dean’s email—the elimination of Emory’s Economics PhD program. When the news broke, I was shocked but not surprised. Over the last ten years, Emory has not supported its Economics program. Even though Economics is Emory’s second most popular major, it has the highest studentteacher ratio of any academic department. Economics majors will tell you how impossible it is to get into Economics courses, particularly electives, some of which have grown from 20 students to over 90. These overcrowded classes make it harder for even the best teachers to provide adequate instruction for their students. Last year, when I asked my Intermediate Microeconomics professor about these problems in his department, he said that when the department approached the administration about hiring new faculty, the administration was unreceptive. According to this professor, who has since left Emory, the administration claimed Economics was a “bubble” field and the number of students in the department would decline. This prognosis could not be farther from the truth—enrollment in the Economics department is higher than it has ever been and continues to increase. When these cuts hit, the already depleted Economics department will start bleeding professors as older professors begin to seek retirement and the stars of the department look for brighter skies at institutions that care about their field. Furthermore, up-andcoming economists will not want to come to Emory—as Dr. Shomu Banerjee told the Wheel last week, the lack of graduate students will stunt incoming professors’ potential for research and collaboration. Thus, the teaching quality in the department will decline as the department fails to attract the best teachers and researchers. Combined with classes that are already over-enrolled, the Economics department will be in shambles and the Economics Bachelor’s degree at Emory will be devalued. Assuming the administration is aware of the impacts these cuts will have on undergraduate education in the department, the question remains: why cut Economics? Certainly, funding Economics PhDs is not more expensive than funding PhDs in other departments. The answer is the rapid rise of the Goizueta Business School, currently ranked #5 among undergraduate business schools by Bloomberg Business Week. If an Emory undergraduate likes numbers and wants to raise the probability of making a good living straight out of college, he or she is confronted with a choice between Economics, which the administra-
tion does not support, and Goizueta, Emory’s top ranked pride and joy. By increasing the incentive for students to choose a pre-business track, competition for acceptance into the business school will increase. The administration hopes that this competition for a limited amount of spots will result in the quality of the students at the business school improving, the acceptance rate going down and Goizueta’s ranking going up. For some undergraduates, the choice between Economics in the College and business at Goizueta is an easy one, as they do not want to take a wide range of classes and the stringent requirements of a B.B.A. are what they want out of their undergraduate experience. However, most Emory undergraduates (myself included) came to Emory because of its liberal arts mission: the ability to experience a wide range of course offerings and become a well-rounded student and person. By compromising the Economics department, the opportunity to develop quantitative skills along with the qualitative skills from a History, English or Linguistics major becomes significantly harder to realize. Although undergraduates can and do double major and receive degrees from Goizueta and the College, their schedules do not allow them to take additional offerings in any other subjects. Because the Economics major requires fewer courses yet still gives students a quantitative skill set, it provides a way for undergraduates to gain marketable skills without compromising their academic and professional goals. I chose to double major in Economics and History because of my deep interest in both subjects, my desire to take courses outside my major and the professional flexibility my majors will afford me after I graduate. Yet, the administration does not seem to understand these reasons for a strong Economics department. Ironically, by stripping the Economics department, the administration is also devaluing its B.B.A. program. Prospective Goizueta undergraduates have to take Introductory Micro and Macroeconomics or Business Economics to matriculate into the business school—these students will have to compete for fewer seats in these classes with lower quality faculty. Thus, the sophomores applying for the business school will be weaker students than they were before the cuts, which will negate the gains the administration hopes to make by pushing students toward business. In pushing undergraduates towards Goizueta by dismantling the Economics department, Emory’s administration is forcing students to make a choice they should not have to make—whether to follow their passions or follow the money. However, the question Emory, as a liberal arts institution, should be posing to its students is, why not both? Ben Leiner is a College Junior from Baltimore, Maryland.
dean publicly states that his or her biggest problem with an academic program is that it is too focused on training its students in skills that will lead to real jobs. But these are all digressions that shield students from understanding what is really at stake. The really big question is not whether or not journalism, economics PhD or any other graduate and undergraduate programs deserves getting the axe. Though such questions deserve answers, the really big question we should be asking ourselves and Dean Forman is this: what kind of university do we want? Are we really a top 20 research university when we are limiting
academic options for students? Should Emory limit its academic horrizons? As Dean Forman points out, Emory has limitless opportunities but limited resources. This means that choices have to be made. In this, I am in full agreement. But this is a discussion that Robin Forman and his supporters within the administration have decided to make private. They didn’t think that students — who supply the funds for 80 percent of the college’s budget — or the heads of the affected departments, were grown-up enough to take part in such an important discussion before a decision was made. It should be made clear that I do not know
James Crissman | Staff
if Dean Forman is right. He could very well be onto something that will strengthen Emory and make it a better place to learn. But it should also be made clear that Dean Forman also does not know if he is right either. And that right there is the problem. Regardless of the merits of Dean Forman’s and, it must be said, President Wagner’s decision, there should have been a serious discussion among administrators, faculty and students about where we, the Emory community, want this university to go. By bypassing the building of a true consensus, administration officials have delegitimized their choice. Former Editorials Editor James Sunshine is a College senior from Boca Raton, Fla.
PETA: Animals Before Women
Eva Rinaldi | Flickr
PRIYANKA KRISHNAMURTHY I’ve been a vegetarian for all of my life. No, I’m not self-righteous about it and no, I won’t criticize anyone based on their dietary choices. I will, however, get pretty upset about animal rights groups who use the exploitation of women as a means of advancing their own agendas. I wouldn’t pigeonhole myself as a feminist. Maybe “post-modernist” is more descriptive, but that’s not to say that I don’t care about the way women are treated in the mass media. I used to be a huge supporter of Persons for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA). As a kid, I would even save up my allowance and send it to them in order to materialize my support. It wasn’t until after I saw their advertisements and read ecofeminist author Carol Adams’ “The Sexual Politics of Meat” that I realized how backwards PETA’s messages were. Advertising is an important facet of firstworld propaganda and networking. However, the use of sexuality in commercials has become a go-to for many advertisers who feel that appealing to sex is the best way to market their item. This image of women has created many problems in discursive language and the explicit objectification of women. A prime example of such objectification is PETA’s banned Superbowl advertisement depicting just this kind of sexual exploitation. The commercial contains half-naked women rubbing raw vegetables on themselves, implying that “vegetables are sexy.” At the end of the commercial, text appears,
reading, “Vegetarians have better sex.” Rather than using subtle sexuality as a means of persuasion, PETA was very explicit with its message. Furthermore, the commercial creates some problems with the way in which PETA looks at women. Rather than using nakedness as a form of liberation, PETA directly ties nudity to sexuality. PETA also depicts these scantily-clad women in a negative light, especially to young men. The only message that the animal rights activist group sends is that these sexy, vegetarian women
PETA’s banned Super Bowl ad objectifies women and does the organization a disservice. are “easy” and should not be taken seriously. Is it really worth prioritizing an anti-fur campaign over a woman’s dignity? Probably not. After watching the banned Super Bowl commercial and looking through the images in their magazines, I promised myself that I would never give a single dollar more to such an organization. Donations to PETA are not only counterproductive to the feminist movement, but are even worse for the ecofeminist movement. Ecofeminism melds feminism and ecology to argue that there is a deep connection between the oppression of nature and women. Western culture has made this oppression acceptable, and advertisers such as PETA use this
exploitation to advance their own interests. This undermines the ecofeminist movement, creating problems that are hard to reverse. There may not be a viable alternative to this issue; however, exploiting women as a means of advancing an animal-rights-based agenda is blatantly counterproductive to both movements. Thus, the question comes down to the legitimacy of ecofeminism, and whether it is an epistemologically sufficient alternative to the way many look at oppression in the modern world. The ecofeminist movement criticizes groups like PETA, which is a step in the right direction. Questioning the underlying causes of oppression is always a prerequisite to understanding and comprehending why objectification and exploitation happen in the first place. Ecofeminism does just that, even if it doesn’t outline a pragmatic alternative to the status quo. So, you may ask, what can we as productive citizens actually do about this issue? Well, we can first stop supporting organizations that engage in the same kinds of activities that they criticize. It may not fix the problem, but it’s better than being complicit with the current institution. PETA’s commercials cannot be taken seriously by a majority of the population — these advertisements are just something to masturbate to. They do not create a sense of zeal for those who actually believe in the cause. We cannot continue to sit back and watch mass media portray women in this light. We must stand up for women and animals alike. Priyanka Krishnamurthy is a College Sophomore from Coppell, Texas.