Stevenson Provost Alice Yang meets with students at the Stevenson Fireside Lounge to discuss the proposal of the critical race and ethnic studies major. Photos by Chelsea McKeown.

“If we don’t do something now, it will never happen.”

The fight for a critical race and ethnic studies (CRES) major at UC Santa Cruz is nearly as old as the school itself. In light of never-ending financial woes, students, faculty and administration at UCSC have decided the time for CRES is now or never.

Humanities dean William Ladusaw underscored the renewed sense of urgency on campus to make this program happen.

“Living with today’s budget makes this an urgent time,” he said. “We have to make the most out of the curriculum that we have. We used to plan for the future, thinking we were going to have lots more faculty, and we had big ideas for all new programs someday. We don’t believe that we’re going to have lots more faculty anymore.”

This coming fall, a formal proposal for CRES will be submitted to the Academic Senate, a legislative body run by the faculty which decides the university’s academic course. The proposed program will include an undergraduate major and minor, as well as a graduate-designated emphasis. A graduate emphasis is to a graduate student as a minor is to an undergraduate student.

Many pre-proposals for the program have already been introduced to UCSC. Eric Porter, the current chair of American studies, was a primary part of the faculty team that wrote up the latest pre-proposal and submitted it for approval and comments from the faculty, administration and students on May 9.

“This pre-proposal is the culmination of many different documents that people have drawn up,” Porter said. “Earlier documents were more like calls for action, where they said, ‘We need an ethnic studies program and this is why.’ There was a longer pre-proposal submitted by faculty in the fall, but Dean Ladusaw asked us, for the purpose of distribution and getting the conversation started, to make it significantly shorter.”

The document proposing the CRES initiative last fall listed 25 faculty members who said they were dedicated to working with the program, in addition to a comparable number who said they wished to support it. Ladusaw said the formal proposal will include a faculty charter, in which faculty can formally show their commitment to the program. The proposal emphasized exploring race and ethnicity through a global lens, something with which many students who have been involved in the planning for CRES have expressed their dissatisfaction.

Third-year Anna Nelson, who has been involved with CRES’s development since early 2011, said she hasn’t agreed with the direction the proposal has taken. She has been part of the student organizing group for CRES and was later a part of the undergraduate, graduate and faculty working group which formed after the March 2 rally and retreat in demand of ethnic studies.

“Some of the changes made by Humanities Dean William Ladusaw [to the fall pre-proposal] are taking the concept of CRES away from its roots in student-initiated struggle in a local context,” Nelson said in an email to City on a Hill Press. “For the past 40 years, UCSC students have fought for ethnic studies with rallies, marches and at least two hunger strikes, all for the simple demand of access to education that was relevant to their lives and was critical of the university itself as an institution that primarily represents and values the histories, knowledge and contributions of white and European cultures.”

The fight for a CRES program at UCSC started in 1969, just four years after the school was established. Students took over the first graduation ceremony and protested the marginalization of and discrimination against students of color on campus. In 1977, a group of students called for a Third World and Native American Studies (TWANAS) program.

“Asking why it has taken 40 years for a CRES program to finally be started at UCSC implies that basically nothing relevant has happened during this period,” said Latin American and Latino studies (LALS) chair Jonathan Fox. “The creation of the campus-wide ethnic studies course requirement was seen as a significant student victory at the time, as mentioned by last year’s commencement speaker for Merrill College, Ricky N. Bluthenthal.”

William Ladusaw, dean of the UCSC humanities division, meets with students at the Stevenson Fireside Lounge to discuss the proposal of the critical race and ethnic studies major.

UCSC currently has LALS, an ethnic studies program focused on Latinos in the Americas. Fox said its creation as a program and eventual growth as a department was an important student victory in the scope of the fight for a CRES program.

Nelson said comparable CRES programs typically follow a “four food groups” model, which consists of Asian American and Pacific Islander, African or black, Chicano or Latino, and Native American or indigenous studies. Macarena Gomez-Barris, the interim chair of American studies and ethnicity at USC, said their curriculum follows such a model.

“The American studies and ethnicity (ASE) major at USC is directly about race and ethnic studies, power, and the analysis of race and racism,” Gomez-Barris said. “For ASE at USC, we start with the assumption that Los Angeles is a global city, where black, Chicano, Native and Asian social movements — of bodies and for political power — have and continue to have intense global ties and a long arc of international influence.”

The UCSC pre-proposal states that CRES seeks to examine “the public” and “the common good” from a racial and ethnic point of view. It goes on to say this requires the study of the dynamic power relations resulting from the cultural and institutional stigma and policy of the idea of “race” on a local, national and global scale. Nelson fears that the emphasis on global perspectives in the pre-proposal will take precedent over all other views.

“Ethnic studies has always been tied to social justice in a U.S. context, especially in terms of  genocide against indigenous and Native Americans and their cultures with U.S. history,” Nelson said. “There’s nothing wrong with studying how race and ethnicity work outside of the U.S., but if the focus is on the ‘global,’ CRES would not be relevant to our local context in this country, this state, this city and of course this campus, which reflects racial inequality itself. Emphasizing the ‘global’ implies that UCSC, within the U.S., is an outside observer, rather than a structure that needs to examine itself.”

One of the CRES faculty and administration working groups is developing a special guest lecture series for the 2012–13 school year. The goal of these lecture series is to generate more student interest in CRES, as well as to learn from comparable programs at other universities so that UCSC may improve its own program.

An independent study sociology class entitled Critical Race and Ethnic Studies: Envisioning and Organizing a Liberatory Department has participated in the planning for the new major for many years. The class is led, taught and organized by students.

“The main goal of the class is to study what CRES is and what it could look like as a major at UCSC,” said Randy Colón, a fourth-year sociology major who is in the class.

Colón said CRES needs to maintain its focus locally in order to draw attention to and combat tensions surrounding race and ethnicity on campus.

“CRES won’t put an end to racist graffiti,” Colón said. “But at least it’ll begin a critical discussion on why more attention should be paid to this issue and what we can do about it.”

On May 20, the CRES independent study class held a meeting at Kresge Town Hall open to all students to discuss the pre-proposal for CRES.

To kick off the meeting, everyone introduced themselves and said why they were there. Reasons ranged from giving support to finding out more about what CRES was. Tamara Gonzalez, a feminist studies and anthropology major, said students need to make sure that this pre-proposal results in what has been rallied, fought and campaigned for 40 years — a CRES program that doesn’t forget its duty to justice and self-examination, as well as global perspectives.

“As students, we have a lot of power and it’s time that we tapped into that power,” Gonzalez said. “We need to tell the administration that this is what we need.”

The following day, a CRES forum was held at the Stevenson Fireside Lounge that invited students, faculty and administration to discuss the pre-proposal and address any questions and concerns people may have had.

At the forum, students from the CRES independent study class discussed their concerns that the pre-proposal created a program that was not focused on local issues, and was designed to look at CRES only through a global perspective.

Ladusaw said much of the vision will be carried out by student interest when the program is created.

“The fact that language doesn’t show up in the pre-proposal doesn’t represent a rejection of the aspiration to the local service learning aspect of the program,” Ladusaw said. “The task here is to make it legible to the bureaucratic process.”

Despite student concerns about the viability of the pre-proposal as it is now, the administration and other groups on campus support the pre-proposal as it stands.

Executive Vice Chancellor (EVC) Alison Galloway has earmarked two faculty provisions for the future major. Faculty provisions are large chunks of money that promise to pay the salary of faculty members for the entire time that they are employed at UCSC. That means a starting salary of at least $60-$65 thousand, which does not include costs that helps to jump-start the academic career of new faculty.

“I think that CRES would be a valuable addition to our campus,” Galloway said. “Many of our faculty are already engaged in work that incorporates a critical examination of these areas of interest.”

The new director of the African American Resource Center, Dr. Marla E. Wyche-Hall, said she was very excited about the pre-proposal and its focus on global perspectives, as well as what it means for the future.

“It is critical to learn about others from a multitude of lenses and perspectives that goes beyond just Black and European, but stems to the Latina, African and many more plethoras of diasporas that should be explored within the realm of higher education and beyond,” Wyche-Hall said. “The wonderful thing about this proposal is that it will bring scholars together from a variety of disciplines and offer topics that will evoke conversations that will ignite scholarly thought.”

Wyche-Hall also said she hopes to teach or co-lecture CRES classes in the future.

This coming fall, a formal proposal for CRES will be submitted to the academic senate, a legislative body run by the faculty which decides the university’s academic course.

Although it remains to be seen what shape CRES will take, students, faculty, and administration alike are setting their sights high.

“I think that CRES, at its full potential, would change the climate of UCSC and become an influential force both academically and politically,” said third-year Anna Nelson. “We should make sure that students are at the center of the decision-making process.”

Graduate Changes

Ph.D. programs in feminist studies and LALS as well as a master’s program in theater arts have been approved at UCSC.

Admissions to the LALS doctorate program will begin in the 2013–14 academic year — entry into the feminist studies Ph.D. will begin in 2012–13. Classes will launch for LALS in fall 2014, and for feminist studies in fall 2013.

“Each of these programs reflects the excellence and distinctiveness of scholarship and creativity and activity at UC Santa Cruz,” vice provost for academic affairs Herbert Lee said in a formal announcement.

The announcement said the feminist studies Ph.D. would offer a unique interdisciplinary approach, while a transnational focus would be apparent in the LALS Ph.D.

Before the changes are implemented, faculty and the graduate division are collaborating to finalize admission planning.

“The curriculum is planned out as part of the program proposal, although exactly how it’s implemented requires additional planning,” Lee said. “If faculty can put together an intellectually coherent program where it fits within our resource envelope, then we try to do all of it that we can.”

Finally, a theater arts master’s program has been implemented, with classes beginning in fall 2012. Because the theater arts major will be a conversion from its current certificate program, admissions have already been in place. The theater arts masters program will take advantage of its departmental ties with Shakespeare Santa Cruz and other professional theaters in its year-long program.

Students who are interested in the new graduate programs should contact the associated departments directly.

Undergraduate Changes.

Admission to the American studies undergraduate major has been formally suspended for two years. Students in the major were notified of the proposed suspension in January 2011.

“Since the American studies major is in suspension, we are not accepting new students into the major — neither frosh nor current students,” said undergraduate American studies advisor Donna Davis in an email. “However, students who are already declared American studies majors will be able to finish their degrees.”

Additionally, the economics dual degree pathway program has been discontinued. The program enrolled students from other UC campuses, but according to Lee’s curriculum update announcement, it has not been used for many years.

Still, changes to UC Santa Cruz’s undergraduate curriculum have not been entirely attritional. Faculty and students have developed plans for new programs in critical race and ethnic studies, including a bachelor’s degree, a minor and a graduate minor — also called a “designated emphasis.”

“A pre-proposal for academic programs in critical race and ethnic studies is currently circulating for comments,” said dean of humanities William Ladusaw in an email. “It describes the curriculum needed and the proposed requirements for an undergraduate major and minor and a graduate minor.”

After comments and statements of support are received, the pre-proposal will be developed into a formal proposal for review and potential approval by the academic senate in the fall.

Forrest Robinson, a humanities professor at UCSC, said American studies “was dumped by its faculty.” Photo by Toby Silverman.

Michael Cowan sits with the American studies founding documents in McHenry Library. Photo by Toby Silverman.

“American studies was dead in the water before anybody knew it.”

UC Santa Cruz humanities professor Forrest Robinson made this assertion, his voice heightening in pitch as he reached the end of the sentence. He was recalling what it was like when the American studies faculty’s decision to dissolve their own department and suspend admission into the major was made public last September.

“For several years, we have sustained our major with fewer permanent faculty than is desirable,” department chair Eric Porter wrote in an email sent to all American studies majors and proposed majors around that time. “It has become clear to us that we cannot permanently sustain a high-quality major on current faculty resources. We have therefore concluded that the best way to support the teaching and research in our scholarly areas and to ensure our own professional development as faculty is to seek homes in other campus departments.”

Porter and others involved in the decision stressed the point that everyone who was already declared or proposed as an American studies major, as well as many first-years who could get in under the wire, would be able to carry out their education as planned. But no new majors after the class of 2014 would be admitted, and the future after that point remained decidedly unclear.

In public meetings held in the weeks after the email was sent, and in the rest of the academic year, it remained uncertain what the department’s status was, whether it would ever come back and why exactly the faculty voted to end their own department. Monica Deebs, a UCSC alumna who was in her final year as an American studies major at the time, remembers confused students “attacking” Eric Porter with questions.

“This meeting [after the announcement of suspension] was packed,” Deebs said. “Everyone showed up — American studies majors, non-American studies majors, faculty. The tone was very much like, ‘What’s happening? Why is this happening?’”

American studies’ confusing end came in the wake of community studies being cut a year earlier, yet the student and faculty responses differed greatly between the two cuts. Both Robinson and Deebs believe the reason there was no public protesting from American studies students was because they took the faculty’s lead in accepting the department’s end as a foregone conclusion, an inevitability.

“I’ve spoken to a lot of students who are very confused,” Robinson said. “There’s a feeling of bafflement, of ‘How can this happen? Why wasn’t more being done to protect the program? Why didn’t I know about this? Why weren’t there meetings [before the decision was made]?’ And the answers were not forthcoming. It was pretty much stated as a fact. So maybe people were baffled into a kind of acquiescence.”

The American studies faculty’s vote to dissolve the major begs a few questions.

Is the department’s end really all about the budget? If not, what else played a role? Does the major stand a chance of resurrection, and if so, what would that look like? What does this mean for the future of interdisciplinary education at UC Santa Cruz? What can the rest of the campus stand to learn from the story of American studies? And what role does the possibility of a critical race and ethnic studies program play in all this?

These questions were brought to various past and present faculty members involved in some way with the department. Although there was some overlap in their answers, the faculty had varying viewpoints.

For Robinson, losing the major on campus is particularly troubling, given the wide range of opportunities and creativity it allows students.

“There is nothing at all like American studies now that American studies is gone,” Robinson said. “You design your own programs. It is the study of the United States in any way that you can make coherent. In a way, you get to shape your own education.”

Or as Michael Cowan, UCSC’s American studies department founder and professor emeritus, put it, the major allows students to “pursue a whole range of interests, and at the same time, focus on things they are particularly interested in.”

For Cowan, 2005 marked the “beginning of the end” for American studies at UCSC.

Cowan founded the major, which was officially proposed in 1977 and approved in 1979, although students had been pursuing independent majors called “American studies” for years already by that time.

He described starting the independent major out of Merrill College in 1970 and watching it grow, of spending the 1975-76 school year at Yale to learn more and eventually develop a core course for the major, and of the exciting early days with a limited faculty.

“It was a rather ambitious project, and when you have only a few faculty you can’t do everything,” Cowan said. “So we agreed that some of the most critical things were to see if we could agree on some of the big questions we wanted to ask.”

Cowan said he sought to tackle issues of citizenry and society in a way political science and sociology could not. For him, the American studies major was to serve as a nexus, linking a cascade of social, historical and political issues in fashions otherwise ignored by their respective departments.

“That was our goal,” Cowan said, “and we felt that the faculty had to remain dedicated to talking to each other, not just go off and teach their own courses, but also modeling civil discourse, often with sensitive materials, because that’s what we hoped the students would be doing.”

For a long time, that was how the department worked, graduating around 2000 majors to date. There has always been a small amount of faculty within the department, but because American studies is interdisciplinary, the department could rely on outside faculty to both teach American studies courses and make classes in their own departments available to American studies students.

“What always struck me,” Cowan said, “was how successful the major was with such a small number of courses that we ourselves could control.”

After the undergraduate department was established, Cowan and the rest of the faculty set their sights on a graduate program. There was some support and interest from the humanities division, and in 2003, prominent American studies scholars George Lipsitz and Tricia Rose came to UCSC, adding fuel to that fire.

“We were this close,” said Cowan, holding his index finger and thumb less than an inch apart.

For department chair Eric Porter, obtaining a graduate program and holding onto faculty members was a matter of life or death for the major. The small faculty model had been successful up to a point, but a growing campus with limited resources posed danger to smaller departments.

“The previous dean of humanities had basically sent this message that the division can’t really support as many departments as it has, and certainly can’t rebuild them to the state that they wanted to be at,” Porter said. “We had this sense that if we had 10 faculty, and were moving towards a graduate program, then we’d be in pretty good shape.”

But an issue with spousal hiring — the school refused to hire new professors’ spouses despite their qualifications and chose to continue the usual faculty search  — prompted the new additions to quickly leave in 2005, and, as Porter remembers it, “then it became clear that the support was not going to be forthcoming.”

Porter calls the lack of a graduate program a catch-22 for the department. He acknowledges it made American studies less influential and valued, but also that there was some resistance from other departments who depended on TAships with American studies to fund their own graduate students. The departures of Tricia Rose and George Lipsitz fit into a “pattern of inconsistent support” within the humanities.

As current humanities dean William Ladusaw sees it, the desire within American studies for a graduate program came more out of necessity than over-ambition. The University of California requires its professors to engage in both graduate and undergraduate education, and for American studies professors, that can be difficult. The decision to disband the department came after the realization that, as Ladusaw put it, “The only way they were going to be fully integrated into graduate education was to move to other departments.”

The failure to start a graduate program was both a symptom and a cause of American studies’ decline at UCSC. Michael Cowan and other professors within the department soon retired or transferred to other departments, making it difficult to sustain the major. Adding to the difficulty were financial limits that made crossover teaching and courseloads less feasible.

“On campus, we have a lot of people who do American studies, and who are active in the American studies organizations, some of whom are really well-known,” said professor Kim Lau, who recently moved from American studies to the literature department. “But they have so many things going on in their own department that they can’t just come teach for us in the way that they need, and the budget exacerbates that problem because departments can’t just loan one of their professors out to teach one of our courses, or to even teach an elective that’s cross-listed. It’s not because they don’t want to, but because of administrative structure and budget constraints.”

Dean of humanities William Ladusaw made the point that this lack of availability was not fair to the students, and cited as proof a survey conducted by SUA last year to determine how difficult it was for students to get into the classes they need. It turned out majoring in something that requires interdisciplinarity can leave students somewhat lost when enrolling for classes.

“If you don’t organize it well, then the people who are not part of the major that is the same name of the department can feel like stepchildren,” he said. “What the class survey showed is that the two majors in humanities that were having the most trouble getting the courses that they needed were feminist studies and American studies, and those are the two majors who use very frequently courses in social sciences, where the courses are very impacted.”

The dean added that general growing pains for the university didn’t help matters.

“Right now, with the number of faculty we had in the mid-nineties, we’re trying to teach twice as many undergraduate students and five times as many graduate students,” he said. “I’ve been here since 1984, and we never really did feel lavish, but the faculty is shrinking in size, and therefore there are lots of things people do want to do, but they have to make choices, and that’s forced on it by the budget.”

The American studies department’s budgetary problems and absence of extra-departmental support has disconcerting resemblance to several other UCSC departments. Community studies was the first to go in 2009, and there are other departments both within humanities and elsewhere facing similar problems. History of consciousness faculty have a mirror image crisis right now — because it is only a graduate program, they are having trouble finding ways to involve themselves in undergraduate education, according to both Eric Porter and Ladusaw. Environmental toxicology, a department within the sciences division that draws on chemistry, biology, and environmental studies, is suffering from a limited faculty. And critical race and ethnic studies — the much buzzed-about potential major — will inevitably need to be interdisciplinary in order to give its area of study justice. But how, when American studies failed, will these programs flourish?

For some UCSC faculty, it all comes down to a matter of semantics.

American studies didn’t start out as a department — it started out as an inter-disciplinary program. The difference between an interdisciplinary academic program and a department is a department houses faculty who must teach that department’s courses, while a program is an academic pathway students can take that involves classes from various departments. Classical studies is an example of one such program — there are no courses or professors designated under classical studies, but students can major in it by taking courses from the literature, history and language departments.

For humanities dean Ladusaw, this is an absolutely crucial distinction.

“A department doesn’t have as much to do with what the program is as it does with the mechanics of building a faculty and making money flow through the system,” he said. “If you’re a department, then you have all of the responsibility of running academic programs, and also a lot of other activities having to do with both faculty assessment and budgetary distribution.”

From Ladusaw’s perspective, it was being a department that killed American studies, and that could pose danger to other fields.

“We’ve got interdisciplinarity all over the place, but creating new little departments is not a smart thing to do,” he said. “That’s one of the things American studies showed. When I first came here, there was no American studies program, but they, from their departments, formed an interdisciplinary program. Later, they got the bright idea of creating a department instead of just having a program. If we knew then what we know now,” he concluded with a chuckle.

Ladusaw says he could see American studies and other departments being brought back to life as academic programs, though proper planning would be important to ensure students could still get into the classes they needed.

“In getting rid of the department, we don’t have to get rid of the program,” he said. “Part of the trouble is that when faculty were moving into these other departments, they felt that they were unable to promise, in perpetuity, that they would be able to teach the courses that they needed to teach in order to keep the American studies major going.”

But department chair Eric Porter doesn’t quite see the feasibility of existing that way, though he said he’s considered it.

“There was actually a quite long conversation that went on [before the decision was made to dissolve the department]” he said. “What were our options? Should American studies become a program in another department? Or we could merge with another department. Then there was also this idea of reconstituting as an interdepartmental program, and there’s some versions of that in the division, like Jewish studies and classical studies, but we’re significantly bigger than them, so it’s still unclear how that would happen.”

Literature professor Susan Gillman sees blurring the lines between departments and even between divisions (such as humanities and engineering) as a possible bright future for UCSC.

“Santa Cruz, for all its interdisciplinarity, has a very fixed set of divisional structures which make it harder to talk across them,” said Gillman, who is also a faculty member affiliated with American studies. “There is this horrible cliché, ‘let no budget crisis go to waste.’ That’s the idea — you can think the unthinkable much more easily.”

This is how Gillman envisions critical race and ethnic studies working, which brings up a whole new issue. One of the biggest arguments thrown around for keeping American studies has always been that it offers a path for students to pursue ethnic studies. If American studies is eventually brought back, it’s unclear how the two would coexist.

What role ethnic studies plays in American studies has long been a point of contention both on campus and on a national level.

Today, humanities professor Robinson teaches classes that he says are intended for American studies students, but his business card identifies him as a “humanities professor.” He made this switch a few years ago, after realizing that the American studies department at UCSC was going in a direction — towards more ethnic studies — that he didn’t agree with.

“I always thought of American studies as the study of the United States in all its dimensions,” Robinson said, “with attention to race, class and gender, but certainly not exclusively. I never thought of American studies as an ethnic studies program. I see them as entirely different.”

Michael Cowan, too, pointed out that American studies is not solely about the issue of race, but rather that race plays a role in American studies. He also speculated that Executive Vice Chancellor Alison Galloway’s motivation for supporting an ethnic studies major as a replacement for American studies, rather than building on American studies’ own long-standing successful focus on cultural diversity, might be in part that she believed it would “solve some political problems.” But Gillman pointed out American studies’ approach to race at UCSC was not always fulfilling to all professors on campus.

“We wanted to be more global, and it was difficult to do that in the way the program was set up,” she said. “One of the courses was called ‘The African-American Experience.’ Experience was singular, as though it were all homogeneous. That model of ethnicity came to be questioned. American studies had long had an uneasy relationship with ethnic studies.”

If American studies makes a comeback and ethnic studies is born on this campus, then what roles would they play with each other? UC Berkeley has both an American studies program and an ethnic studies program, while the University of Southern California combines the two into one.

It remains unclear what could happen at UCSC. Despite Ladusaw’s insistence the American studies major will return in one way or another, others are unconvinced. Professor Robinson expressed doubt, and Porter said American studies coming back might be “an impossibility at this point,” though he said he is optimistic for critical race and ethnic studies.

But for the next three years, American studies remains, though it is being phased out. After the class of 2014 graduates, an entire area of study will, at least for a while, be leaving with them. A lot of reasons have been given as to why, but still some questions remains. One from Cowan, the man who made this major possible, feels particularly relevant.

“Once the horses were out of the barn, once the faculty had left, it was virtually impossible to pull them back together,” he said. “To switch metaphors, my sense is they wanted to avoid remaining on what they saw as a sinking ship. The question is whether, at some key moments, if there had been the right leadership at several campus levels or more conversations, especially with students … that might have changed.”

Herbie Lee, vice provost for Academic Affairs, (top) and American studies department chair Eric Porter (bottom) discuss the suspension of the major. The Committee on Educational Policy has postponed suspension to allow faculty to restructure and current students to graduate. Photos by Prescott Watson and Kyan Mahzouf.

It’s an unusual disagreement.

Earlier this year, American studies faculty voted to suspend admission to the major beginning July 2011, citing decreased resources that greatly reduce the capacity of the program to provide a quality educational experience for students.

However, the Academic Affairs Committee on Educational Policy (CEP) has postponed the final decision on the suspension of American studies until February 2012.

Provost for Academic Affairs Herbie Lee said that according to the CEP, there are still alternative measures the American studies department can take to save the major. Lee said among the suggestions given by the committee, the CEP would like to see the major restructured to operate within available resources rather than be suspended.

Department chair Eric Porter said the delay does nothing to improve the quality of the program.

“The status is the same,” Porter said. “The faculty voted to suspend the major because we don’t have the adequate resources or faculty to sustain the major, and we are not getting any additional support.”

In 2004, the major had 10 faculty members. By the beginning of this year, that number had dropped to five. A decreasing faculty and highly impacted classes are driving forces behind the deterioration of American studies at UC Santa Cruz.

The proposal sent to the CEP by American studies faculty allowed for the major to be reinstated, should additional resources become available.

Lee said disagreements between the CEP and American studies faculty about how to best serve students contributed to the CEP’s decision not to take a firm stance on whether the major will be suspended or not.

In order to serve declared American studies majors, the CEP is implementing a teach-out plan. This will keep the major for at least two more years to ensure current students are able to graduate.

Lee said the CEP is hopeful this will give American studies faculty time to attempt alternative measures to preserve the major.

Fourth-year American studies major Falyn Davis stated although she acknowledges the lack of resources and the high amount of impacted classes, it’s frustrating that faculty members voted to suspend the major rather than find an alternative.

“The professors seem so caring and knowledgeable,” Davis said. “I don’t understand why they would just let the major go without putting up a fight.”

CEP has proposed running American studies as an interdepartmental major. This would allow faculty from other humanities departments to teach in American studies without becoming permanent staff. American studies faculty are currently working to transfer professors from other departments into American studies.

CEP has asked faculty to provide an update on the status of the major in December 2011. The committee will then reach a final decision as to whether the major will be permanently suspended by February 2012, Lee said.

“I don’t know what the future holds,” he said. “I’m cautiously optimistic that we will be able to keep the major. There are great sources and ways that we can use to move forward with this.”

Photo by Prescott Watson.

Lexi Stephenson’s mother likes to say, “No one can take your education.” But after Stephenson switched from community studies after it was cut last winter, only to see the suspension of her current major, American studies, it seems like someone is trying very hard to do so.

Stephenson fell in love with community studies as a second-year when she took an introductory course taught by Sean Burns. Although a self-proclaimed science and math student by nature, she said she felt inspired by that class to make a difference.

“Walking out of the classroom, I felt like change really could happen and that I could be a part of it,” Stephenson said. “That was one of the greatest feelings I have ever felt in my entire life.”

Stephenson decided that she wanted to provide educational opportunities for immigrants and the children of immigrants. So after declaring the community studies major, Stephenson focused her courses in education.

Studying abroad in Barcelona, Spain during her third year, Stephenson met a fellow community studies major from UCSC in a dive bar. Learning of her peer’s field study orchestrating a needle exchange program for sex workers, Stephenson became increasingly excited about her own field study. However, when she returned to UCSC for winter quarter last year, she found her major had been cut and the courses she intended to take were no longer offered.

“It was just sad,” Stephenson said. “When you believe in something and [the university] decides it isn’t valuable, it’s very disheartening.”

She scrambled to redefine her interests to fit course offerings, but eventually decided she was unwilling to compromise her education to remain in the major.

“I was trying to change what I wanted to do just to get into classes,” Stephenson said. “That defeated the purpose for me. Community studies is supposed to be about finding a passion and then figuring out a way to use it to make a difference.”

After debating her options, Stephenson declared the American studies major. In January, faculty in the American studies department voted to suspend admission to the major starting July 1. They cited as the primary reason for suspension the dwindling resources that significantly reduced the capability of the program to provide a quality educational experience for students.

Stephenson said programs like American studies are the reason many students come to UCSC, and eliminating these options degrades the value of the university.

“Santa Cruz attracts a certain type of student,” Stephenson said. “A lot of us come here to get the alternative education offered at UCSC. Unfortunately [budget cuts] are changing that.”

Stephenson said she and fellow American studies majors are angry about what is happening, but are unsure of how to act. For a while Stephenson had been considering utilizing public art to make her frustrations heard, but decided that might not accomplish anything.

“I wanted to make signs that say, ‘Fuck UC’ really big and put them all over campus. But that is not very mature,” Stephenson said. “If you do that, no one is going to listen.”

Stephenson says American studies majors should not be left to fight for social sciences and humanities programs.

“I think it is the responsibility of students and teachers to do something about this,” Stephenson said. “A lot of students come here with the false notion that they will be able to take these classes.”

Despite her frustrations, Stephenson feels lucky to have been a part of the program before it was suspended.

“I think the [American studies] major is the best education I could have gotten at this school,” she said.

Photo by Morgan Grana.

When Gareth Rees-White first started his courses in American studies at UC Santa Cruz during fall quarter, he was reading the likes of Nathaniel Hawthorne, Cormac McCarthy and William Faulkner — then in winter, Toni Morrison and Mark Twain. This quarter, he will be reading the Twilight series.

“In my first quarter there were loads of courses that sounded amazing,” Rees-White said. “Then in winter there were less, and this quarter I’m taking a class on vampires because it is my only option.”

An international student from England, Rees-White is studying American studies at UCSC as part of a year abroad program offered by his home “uni,” the University of East Anglia.

Rees-White knew that he wanted to attend a UC ever since visiting California on a family vacation while in secondary school.

“I was sitting on the beach with my sister in Santa Barbara and the volleyball team was practicing,” Rees-White said. “I remember thinking — this is a university?”

When applying to universities a year later, he chose American studies as his major because it offered the chance to study abroad in the United States. His abroad program dictates that he take 70 percent of his courses at UCSC in the upper division of the American studies department. Earlier this year, American studies faculty voted to suspend admission to the major as of July 1.

Citing the reasons for the major’s suspension, faculty said the needs of students were not being met due to the fact that only five professors were specific to the department and that other departments were spread too thin to lend adequate assistance. Department head Eric Porter said students already in the major should not have trouble completing their degrees, though according to Rees-White, that assurance does not include a wide enough selection of classes.

Rees-White chose Santa Cruz for its natural beauty, iconic boardwalk and its American studies major. Of all the schools Rees-White looked into, only UCSC had an established American studies program, an aspect of the university that largely factored into his decision to attend. If he were applying for study abroad this year, however, Rees-White could not chose UCSC because of the reduction of classes. Rees-White said that the suspension of the major will reduce the number of international students at UCSC.

Since coming to Santa Cruz, Rees-White has fallen in love with the redwoods — and a woman. He refers to the latter as the most serious relationship he has been a part of, and says they already have plans to see each other after he goes back to England. Despite self-professed poor skills, he says he is also equally infatuated with the extreme sport that put Santa Cruz on the map, surfing.

In his time at UCSC, he has made many friends, sharing British culture with them as he learns what it means to be an American.

“I would like to think that I have influenced the culture a wee bit,” Rees-White said, “and it has definitely influenced me.”

Illustration by Rachel Edelstein.

“Free education rain or shine” is written on the sidewalk every 100 feet, and flyers on every other light post for a noon rally draw attention to events planned for the first Tuesday and Wednesday of March.

The demonstrations on these two days are meant to spread awareness about the ongoing UC budget cuts. Organizers point to the UC regents for the state’s failure to fund higher education.

In fall 2009, UC regents voted to increase UC registration fees by 32 percent. A year later, in 2010, the regents increased fees another 8 percent.

Coincidently, many divisions continue to face cuts to their departments. At UCSC, the American studies and the community studies majors have been suspended until further notice.

Brian Malone, campus chair for the United Auto Workers Union (UAW) and a fifth-year graduate literature student, has been organizing to inform the campus about these cuts.

“The pressure to privatize the UC is coming from the failure of state funding,” Malone said, “but the way UC has spent the money has sort of shifted the burden onto students.”

Open University Together (OUT), an unofficial student group, is organizing a demonstration for March 1. The group has been organizing since the start of the semester to make March 1 a peaceful, fun and informative demonstration.

The excitement for March 1 comes from the goal to get at least 1,000 students on the East Field at noon, where they will spell out “Free Education” with their bodies.

Second-year environmental studies and art major Noah Miska was one of the students who came up with this idea and has been scrambling to make the event happen.

The group has accumulated $1,300 in grants from various colleges, which will pay for food, art supplies and facilities for the event.

Student participants will be invited to make use of the 11 gallons of paint, several hundred pieces of chalk, 256 markers, 1,000 feet of butcher paper and several hundred pieces of cardboard provided by OUT to construct posters, artwork and idea boards to express their ideas and opinions about the state of the UC.

After students finish spelling “Free Education,” they will form discussion groups, teachings and an open space to meet others. For Miska, the event will show that activism can be both fun and productive.

“I want to use the event as a networking space for future organizers of non-violent demonstrations,” Miska said.

For Miska, free education starts with spreading awareness.

“I want students to engage in knowing that no one should have to pay for access to resources on campus,” Miska said. “Anyone who wants to learn about something has a right to be connected to someone who is able and willing to teach on that subject.”

Even though the cuts come from the state, part of the problem is that certain “corporations are not being taxed to the extent that they could be,” Miska said. He commented on the administration’s idea that cuts are inevitable, and wants to make this a focal point at the March 1 demonstration.

“I just want to remind people of the ideal on which the university was founded, which our administration seems to have lost sight of,” Miska said. “They don’t think it’s possible for us to have full state funding, but I think that they are wrong.”

Malone says that cuts have not been equally distributed across campuses and inter-departmentally. He said that the cuts to particular divisions and resources have made it seem like the administration targets particular groups.

“All students are affected in some way, but the cuts have also been particularly targeted to students of color in terms of accessibility to the UC,” Malone said. “Programs like American studies, community studies and the lack of ethnic studies continue to impact these communities that are already being hit hard by both the UC and the state’s policy.”

The possibility of bringing an ethnic studies major to UCSC — the only UC aside from Merced that does not have one — will be one of the main discussion points on March 2.

Organizers hope the momentum of March 1 will roll over to the events planned for March 2. The ad-hoc group of organizing students plan to have snake walks on campus to draw more students for the noon rally. The rally will be situated around a carnival aspect with artwork, skits and various speakers to educate students on the complexity of budget cuts.

“We do talk a bit about ethnic studies developing here,” Malone said. “I mean, it’s not going to make up for what’s been done … but it’s something that needs to be done.”

Third-year history and sociology Carol Hernandez is part of the March 2 organization group. She said that students’ experiences in overcrowded classrooms, the unbalanced ratio of teacher aides to students, the cut resources and the cuts to certain majors need to be openly discussed among faculty, workers and students along with the administration.

“The focus is imagining a new university,” Hernandez said. “It doesn’t necessarily mean diversity in the demographics — it means diversity in ideologies and perspectives and experiences. It’s a start, and in that start you start with that dialogue and conversation that could eventually lead to some structural change.”

Illustration by Rachel Edelstein

“So what exactly do you do?”

My reply, as usual, is highly eloquent: “I … study Americans?” As expected, this draws a somewhat unwarranted — and unwanted — snort of derisive laughter.

The scene is one of countless going-away parties. The questioner, one more from an endless line of concerned friends and family.

People I talked to just didn’t understand. Why could I not just be a good child and follow in my siblings’ footsteps towards geology? More importantly, why would I, an Englishman, want to study Americans?

I’d give the easy answer. Many international students initially chose American studies at their home institutions because the major includes a year abroad, of which I am slowly nearing the halfway mark.

Yet, while the year abroad is certainly appealing, in a way it overshadows the true value of American studies: Under the banner of one subject, a student may study a wide variety of topics.

Simply put, few other majors at UC Santa Cruz offer so broad a selection as the recently threatened department.

And now that the community studies department has been suspended for two academic years, American studies is the only remaining department to offer students at UCSC a way to focus their attentions on American culture.

But the true tragedy is that by shutting the doors on the department, the university is also potentially shutting the door on future international students. In the grand scheme of things, this may seem like an insignificant loss. However, for a university that prides itself on its student diversity, the closure will be felt, because it will cause a substantial loss of an intriguing section of the student population.

The department’s curriculum is dynamic — if in some way a subject can be connected to the American experience, it can be part of the American studies major. The history and culture of jazz? American studies. The Western, both the fictional and historical varieties? American studies. In-depth explorations of authors such as Mark Twain? American studies.

Had there not been an American studies department when I first applied to UCSC, the school would never have been so high on my list. The one factor unique to UCSC as opposed to the other schools I looked into — UC Santa Barbara, my second choice, for example — was that it had the department.

It was hard enough to leave my life over 2,000 miles away, without the added stress of developing my own major at another university which did not offer an American studies program. For this simple reason, I chose UCSC over other campuses, and have since discovered other international students studying here who did the same.

I have had such incredible experiences in this strange little city — learning to surf (badly), living in a redwood forest, and simply experiencing a different culture from the ground level. It pains me that, come next year, others will be deprived of this due to the campus’s selective cutting of expenses.

That American studies is to be dealt a death blow as other departments are allowed to continue to exist is simply maddening. The move is indicative of UCSC’s pattern of shedding that which makes it unique, in favor of the more traditional majors.

A university is supposed to provide opportunities, but the suspension of American studies does the opposite. Without the major, future students will lose the ability to study an almost entirely interdisciplinary subject, and prospective abroad students will lose a draw to discover Santa Cruz.

By cutting American studies, the university has cut one of its best draws to international students. As such, the loss of this subject not only prevents homegrown students from learning about their own culture but also from interacting with those from other countries. It seems ironic, but it is through American studies — and these interactions — that students may just learn that there is more to the world than America.

Illustration by Matt Boblet.

With $22 billion budget deficit facing the UC system, it is only natural that we should witness difficult — even painful — cuts across the board. But where one would expect the administration to make careful, perhaps surgical cuts around the UC’s heart there is instead a likeness to that of the cleaving of a butcher’s blade.

At UC Santa Cruz, the students have come to know this all too well. Most general education courses once offered at UCSC with classes of fewer than 100 students have been all but wiped out. UCSC Extension programs? Gone. Arabic language courses? Gone. Classical music minor? Gone. The American studies department? Suspended. (But in the words of Shakespeare, “A rose by any other name…”)

As the university slashes away the programs that make UCSC what it is, it is important that we not respond with apathy. Steadily, UCSC has seen a progressively smaller turnout from students protesting against program cuts and fee hikes. In comparing the hundreds of students creating an uproar about the 2009 fee hike to the roughly 30 that gathered to object to the American studies program getting slashed, it is clear that students have started to feel complacent.

But this is our university, and we should fight to protect it.

UC president Mark Yudof once described the position of the president of the University of California as “like being manager of a cemetery.” True to form, we — at UCSC alone — have seen $32 million worth of campus units sent to the grave under his presidency, not including the $28 million one-time cuts felt mostly by UCSC’s staff and faculty and their salaries.

Sadly, soon to join the list of the dead is the aforementioned American studies program, reduced now to only a handful of staff and faculty due to the administration’s fund-starving initiatives. This major, unique to UCSC has gone out with a whimper.

The implications of cutting yet another long-standing “nonstandard” program of UCSC is not only absurd but altogether detrimental to the quality of its students’ educations. As a degree that had something to offer those interested in literature, race and ethnicity, politics, history, economics and U.S. culture and society, the administration’s decision to cut the program only further discourages pursuits in interdisciplinary education.

While nobody ever likes to be portrayed as the villain, it is becoming increasingly difficult for the student body to sympathize with those holding UC’s purse strings. In the face of a beleaguered, yet animated statewide student body that has repeatedly mobilized and protested against their decisions, the UC regents have provided little else but over $4,000 worth of fee hikes per student and zero indication that the program cuts will end.

At least Dr. Evil had the decency to laugh maniacally when he did a dastardly act.

Grotesquely, the shorter a student’s time spent in the UC system, the better off financially the student will be. With Gov. Jerry Brown’s predicted $500 million slash to the UC budget on the table, there’s little doubt as to who will bear the brunt of the blow.

College-bound students might have once asked, “How soon can I get into college?” In the face of the mounting wall of UC debt, they’ll soon ask, “How soon can I get out?” Yet, as the proverbial walls to California’s systems of higher education shudder, threatening to collapse on the students they shelter, there remains hope.

Within former Gov. Schwarzenegger’s approved budget for this year were $305 million restored to UC funding. Top that off with the additional $620.8 million predicted to be generated annually from the two consecutive fee hikes approved by the UC Board of Regents, and there’s a sizable sea of green to keep our schools afloat.

But how the money is used and where it is allocated will always be the issue, and it remains up to the students to keep the pressure on the regents to spend appropriately. That opportunity is coming on Jan. 18 in San Diego, where the UC Board of Regents will meet to talk for the first time this year.

As the UC reevaluates its priorities, we must remind them that our voice still matters.

Students organized a meeting on Monday to get answers to their questions about the sudden announcement that the American studies major would be suspended. Approximately 30 to 40 students attended the town hall meeting, along with three of the five department faculty members. Students offered their suggestions on how to maintain the goals of the American studies department even after its suspension. Photo by Nick Paris.

After learning about their department’s suspension, American studies majors rallied together to organize a town hall meeting to express their confusion and anger.

Students affiliated with the major were notified this month that admission to the American studies major will be suspended July 1.

Fourth-year American studies major Shawn Freeman, who helped organize the informational meeting, said it was successful.

“This is exactly what I was expecting,” Freeman said. “Students had concerns and they expressed [them], considering the meeting went over an hour.”

Approximately 30 to 40 students squeezed into conference room 202 in Humanities 1 on Monday afternoon and voiced their opinions and questions.

Some missed class for this opportunity. Others weren’t even American studies majors.

American studies department chair and professor Eric Porter, who sent the e-mail notice of the suspension to majors and proposed majors, led the discussion. The vice provost and dean of undergraduate education Bill Ladusaw and two of the four other American studies faculty members were also present.

Fourth-year American studies major Elena Brown was pleased with the outcome of the conference.

“We didn’t want just dialogue from them,” she said. “We weren’t sure of what the format of the meeting would be.”

Fourth-year American studies major Perry Trucco thought the meeting was straightforward.

“[Porter] wanted to put into our heads there’s not much we can do,” he said. “The true issue isn’t in our hands. Everybody wanted to do something, but it’s not in our control at this point.”

Porter said it was the American studies faculty who voted within the department itself to suspend the major.

Unlike community studies, which was cut in spring 2009, American studies faces suspension rather than elimination. The decision to discontinue community studies was made primarily by one administrator. American studies, on the other hand, was suspended based on the recommendations of the department’s faculty.

“There have been too few resources for too long,” Porter said.

In addition to the budget cuts, faculty members have transferred out of the department or to other universities.

When students asked why the school added the new Jewish studies major, the American studies faculty said that the new major requires far fewer resources than American studies would need. Unlike American studies, which has its own professors dedicated to the major, Jewish studies relies on the faculty of other departments, such as history of consciousness, literature and music.

At a quarterly press conference Monday, UCSC Chancellor George Blumenthal said he is optimistic about the suspension. He hopes it will create new opportunities to develop programs like ethnic studies.

“The suspension, or the potential suspension of that major does give us an opportunity to rethink things from anew,” he said, “and we could very well end up in a better place than where we started.”

But students don’t want a new place to start.

Some were frustrated by the short notice and finality of the suspension.

“It’s a little too late,” Brown said. “[The faculty] already have their minds set. They could’ve opened dialogue a lot sooner. I’m a little skeptical … about their intentions, and maybe they’re just trying to save their own asses.”

Students want to save American studies any way that they can. Some suggested creating a new major with the combination of American studies and ethnic studies.

American studies professor Kimberly Lau said the faculty has already considered this option.

“We talked to everyone on campus about collaborating, but because of resource scarcity it’s difficult for them,” she said.

Another idea was to integrate the goals of American studies into the classes of other departments.

Trucco said the program helped him appreciate aspects of history he wouldn’t have learned in other classes.

“You can’t get that stuff from other majors,” he said. “It enlightened me more so than I anticipated.”

Lau said the suspension may even benefit American studies majors.

This spring is the last quarter Introduction to American Studies will be offered. Instead of teaching the introduction course, professors and teaching assistants will be able to teach more upper-division courses next year.

And because Introduction to American Studies is the only pre-requisite for declaring the major, proposed majors should not have a problem declaring this year.

In 2012–2013, the absence of the 100, 101 and 102 series will free up professors and TAs to teach other American studies electives.

As a result, class sizes will decrease and more courses will be offered for declared majors.

Any proposed majors can get into Introduction to American Studies next quarter and shouldn’t have trouble pursuing the major, the faculty said.

The suspension should not affect majors’ applications to graduate or law school, department chair Porter said.

Meeting organizer Freeman said the turnout was good considering the short notice. Messages announcing the town hall were sent en masse to students and alumni throughout the community.

Meeting organizers met on Saturday night and Monday morning to collaborate on a list of concerns.

Students wanted to know what eliminating the concentration actually means for the campus community, Freeman said.

Porter said many American studies lecturers and staff work in other departments as well.

Students said they are interested in planning another meeting, possibly with the Student Union Assembly.

Porter said no promises were made to lecturers and graduate students concerning jobs for the future or that American studies would be back in two years.

“Even if we hire another faculty member, that’s not the progress we want to make,” Porter said.

For the time being, the suspension stands, but Porter said he will do his best to maintain future communication with students.

“That’s all we can do,” he said. “There’s just a handful of us.”

The American studies major will be suspended in July this year. Students who have already proposed or declared the major will be able to complete their degree, but the major will be closed to new applicants. Photo by Sal Ingram.

The American studies faculty has voted to suspend admission to the American studies major as of July 1 this year.

Since the 1970s, the American studies major has given students an interdisciplinary and historical context in which to study the United States. It allows students to study the diversity within its political, social and cultural institutions. The department’s mission is to prepare students to think critically, be effective writers and responsible citizens.

The faculty voted to recommend to the academic senate that the program be suspended for one or two years. This is “not a cancellation” of the program, said vice provost and dean of undergraduate education Bill Ladusaw.

Declared and proposed American studies majors should not have any difficulty completing their degrees, said Eric Porter, professor and head of the department, in an e-mail to students affiliated with the department.

The academic senate committee on educational policy, which has authority over all undergraduate matters, will decide whether or not to cancel the program.

There are currently around 125 declared American studies majors. In the 2008–2009 academic year, 36 students graduated with degrees in American studies.

The feminist studies and linguistics departments, which are also in the humanities division, also granted around 30 to 60 degrees in the 2008–2009 school year. In the same academic year, psychology granted 422 degrees. The molecular engineering department granted three.

Currently the American studies department has only five faculty members. Literature, the largest department in humanities, currently has around 40 faculty members. The linguistics department and language studies program has around 11, philosophy has seven and feminist studies six.

The limited number of faculty members is the primary reason for suspending the program, Ladusaw said. But because other departments are already stretched thin, the American studies department cannot count on them to provide necessary professors to maintain the major.

Hiring new faculty is not an option, because the process is very slow, Ladusaw said.

“The wise thing to do is to take a time-out, [rather] than bring more students in than we can serve,” he said.

Porter, the head of the American studies department, assured students who received the e-mail that students currently declared or proposed in the major will be able to complete their major and obtain their degree in “a timely fashion.” He advised proposed American studies majors to take the courses required to declare their major by spring quarter. Courses such as Introduction to American Studies will be offered for the last time this spring.

Fourth-year American studies and psychology major Elena Brown said she is unhappy with the murky fate of the American studies department.

“It sucks, and I’m upset about it,” Brown said. “It’s really frustrating. They’ve already cut community studies. Humanities are just not important here, apparently — where you learn to think critically about big issues like multiculturalism and diversity.  American studies is the closest thing to ethnic studies, and now it’s being targeted.”

The decision to suspend the undergraduate major will affect graduate students as well.

For Adam Reed, second-year graduate student instructor and history of consciousness doctoral candidate, the dissolution of the American studies major means that finding work as a teaching assistant or graduate student instructor will be more difficult.

“American studies has been a place for history of consciousness [graduate] students to get TA-ships, and we’re getting incredibly fucked,” Reed said. “So American studies is gone, there are not going to be any other programs for students to TA.”

Reed’s graduate focus on race in the United States makes him the perfect candidate for a TA in American studies, but not for other departments. He said eliminating the American studies department would mean the loss of valuable academic research and resources.

“We’re pretty much closing down a whole important field of knowledge that students are really interested in and is really important,” Reed said. “And it’s just going to be gone.”

Magaly Monroy, fourth-year American studies major, said that the suspension sends a very discouraging message about what kinds of programs the university values.

“It makes me feel that the university is telling me that what I want to be learning is not as important as either math or science majors,” Monroy said.

Brown said one of the key ideas of public education is supposed to be that all students should be able to choose to study any discipline they are passionate about.

“That’s the beauty of going to public university — the diversity between disciplines and people — and it’s becoming less and less diverse,” Brown said. “It’s really frustrating, because I don’t think students care.”

An informational meeting will be held on Monday in Humanities 1, Room 202. American studies students will have the opportunity to discuss further plans for the major and will be given information about how to proceed.

Ladusaw said that the two main goals of his office are to serve the current students and to engage in active conversation on how to sustain the American studies program in the future.