As the Faculty of Arts and Science restructures, the Classics and Archeology Department is fighting to survive.
Daryn Lehoux, head of the Classics and Archaeology department at Queen’s, believes the limit on enrolment is the beginning of the end for classical studies at Queen’s.
“It’s a slap in the face, frankly, and a kick in the teeth,” Lehoux said in an interview with The Journal.
On Jan. 15, Lehoux received an email that all Arts and Science courses with less than 10 students in the last three iterations would be canceled with few exceptions. At the Jan. 26 Faculty Board meeting, Dean Barbara Crow explained the enrolment minimum will be put in place to balance the Faculty of Arts and Science’s (FAS) budget.
For Lehoux, this restriction spells the end for upper-year Greek and Latin at Queen’s, languages which have been taught continuously for 182 years at Queen’s.
“Classics is being threatened because the course cap will destroy us if it’s implemented rigorously and suddenly like this,” Lehoux said.
Lehoux agrees the budget crisis must be remedied, and has met consistently with the Dean’s office regarding the course cap.
“I respect the budget crisis. I understand the budget crisis, but we can’t allow the sudden budget crisis to kill the department and that’s what it’ll do within five years,” Lehoux said.
In October, the department proposed combining second, third, fourth, and graduate level Greek and Latin courses, reducing the teaching staff required for upper-year language courses.
However, Lehoux estimates the department needs two years to adapt their teaching in first and second year courses for this solution to be a possibility. He hopes prioritizing fluency in lower-level classes will prepare students in second and third year to enter classes with graduate students.
Lehoux estimates it will cost around $40,000 to run the four classes necessary over the two-year period to get future first- and second-years up to speed. Despite promising conversations with the Dean’s Office last year, the dream of implementing this solution was crushed.
“The goalposts have been moved and we’re not being given the time to catch up, and once that’s done, we’ll never be able to catch up,” Lehoux said.
Without upper-year language courses, Queen’s students will graduate without the requirements necessary to enrol in future graduate programs. As news of the Queen’s budget crisis made national headlines, Lehoux turned his attention to his students.
For Amber Mifkovic, ArtSci ’24, the minimum enrolment rule goes further than just canceled courses.
“If that right is being stripped from us by the faculty, who wants these courses gone, it’s incredibly damaging, and it will impact and hurt an entire generation of burgeoning scholars,” Mifkovic said in an interview with The Journal.
Despite attending Faculty Board as a student representative, Mifkovic doesn’t feel heard. Removing the opportunity to learn Latin and Greek pushes students away from Classics, removing the possibility for them to enter academia.
“To strip this away from them is to strip away a choice, and it’s pushing [students] into other degrees they don’t care about, that they’re not passionate,” Mifkovic said.
Latin and Greek are essential to learning, both Mifokovic and Lehoux argue. In their opinion, the University’s reputation is at risk.
“If we’re going to implement these strict course caps this suddenly and allow a department like Classics to die, we’re not playing in the same sandbox as McMaster, Western, and Waterloo,” Lehoux said.
After reaching out to Classics department heads across Canadian universities, Lehoux found a troubling pattern. According to him, when other
universities imposed enrolment minimums without exceptions, Classics departments shut down.
“As soon as you stop teaching the languages, the department just atrophies and you can no longer attract good researchers, you can no longer attract good students,” Lehoux said.
At the end of his statement, Lehoux urged students to email Dean Barbara Crow and other administration. Professors from across the world shared Lehoux’s statement, some from the University of Warwick and the University of Siena writing personal emails to Principal Patrick Deane.
“The Faculty of Arts and Science responded to emails received from several Classics and Archaeology scholars,” Dean Barbara Crow said in a statement to The Journal.
“The Department of Classics and Archaeology has not been targeted as the current budget situation is addressed.”
Though inspired by the international support, Lehoux felt disheartened reading the comments on articles written about the cuts that question whether Classics is worth teaching at modern universities. The view has been mirrored in the University’s own statements, including one from Provost Matthew Evans, who asked during the December Faculty of Arts and Science town hall whether Queen’s as a university values Classics.
Tags
budget deficit, classics, courses
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