Editor’s note: This commentary is by the University of Vermont faculty and staff of Theatre, Dance & Speech and Debate. Their names are listed below.
Dear President Garimella, Provost Prelock, Dean Falls, and the Members of the Board of Trustees,
We, the faculty and staff of Theatre, Dance & Speech and Debate, strongly reject the decision to cut 12 majors, 11 minors, and four master’s courses from the College of Arts and Sciences; we reject the decision to close the Departments of Classics, Geology and Religion; and we reject the thinking, and the math, that make these cuts appear necessary and inevitable.
As a department whose arts comprise some of the oldest in the Western world – theatre, dance, and rhetoric – we know something about world-building projects. It is with this in mind, that we are alarmed to see the university administration recommend decisions that make our university – and the world it is bringing into existence – less safe for our current and future students.
The College of Arts and Sciences has served the ecology of this university system since 1791. A university is not – and never has been – composed of silos where people work in isolation. Ideas travel not like tree roots, but like grassroots – ideas seeded in theatre take root in geography, ideas seeded in religion take root in environmental studies, ideas seeded in geology take root in sculpture, and ideas seeded in critical race and ethnic studies are taught by many of the colleagues whose disciplines and departments are now recommended for termination. The list goes on and goes in many directions at once because that is what an ecology is all about – cross fertilization, the production of new ideas that are protected until they can flourish into the thing that helps us to heal what needs healing, the clarification of concepts, and the honing of critical thinking. When a part of an ecological system dies, it makes the rest of the system prone to further illness, to dying, and possibly to death.
We are a department comprised of disciplines whose modus operandi is public gathering, liveness. In other words: people. We value people over budget numbers made to appear neutral, as budgets are also world-building exercises and account only for the ideological beliefs of those who create them. Our colleagues across the humanities and social sciences value diversity, equity and inclusion, and teach trans, queer, BIPOC students on this campus who would otherwise find little safety, little room to understand their place in the world, nor the languages to develop that place and to invent the world that we co-create with them. We teach students to think critically, to expand their creative minds, and to be resilient. Cutting these majors and departments creates a death spiral for the College of Arts and Sciences where the future of young Vermonters, out-of-state, and international students who do not wish to enter STEM fields will have no language to understand just how much the world needs them, and no framework to understand their place in the world.
The university’s decision to cut from the College of Arts and Sciences in this way, at this time, is unconscionable. It works against everything the university claims for its ethos. In light of recent decisions, it is an ethos that is about risking the future of humanity for the quick fix of seeing the university’s place in the world as a vocational-technical institute.
History will show that what is happening at this moment, in this place, is the beginning of the end of progressive liberal arts higher education in Vermont. History will also show that we, the faculty and staff of the Department of Theatre, Dance & Speech and Debate, reject these decisions.
John Forbes, Professor, Theatre and Dance
Martin Thaler, Professor, Theatre and Dance
Sarah Carleton, Associate Professor, Theatre and Dance
Katie Gough, Associate Professor, Theatre and Dance
Helen Morgan Parmett, Edwin W. Lawrence Professor of Forensics, Associate Professor, Theatre and Dance
Julian Barnett, Lecturer, Theatre and Dance
Lawrence Connolly, Lecturer, Theatre and Dance
Paula Higa, Lecturer, Theatre and Dance
Justin Morgan Parmett, Lecturer, Theatre and Dance
Sara Nelson, Lecturer, Theatre and Dance
Sarah Bush, Costume Shop Supervisor, Theatre and Dance
Bert Crosby, Production Manager, Lighting Designer & Master Electrician, Theatre & Dance, Music
Kellie Fleury, Administrative Coordinator
Wayne Tetrick, Marketing and Outreach Coordinator, Theatre and Dance
Patricia Mardeusz, Library Associate Professor, Liaison to: Classics, English, Film & Television
Studies, Religion, Theatre & Dance, Honors College
