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Entering the main entrance to the SUNY Fredonia campus, one is greeted by banners noting that we value and seek to instill the importance of being "skilled, creative, connected, and responsible." These four goals are also emblazoned on pillars in the Williams Center; they grace many other areas of the campus physically and digitally.
I chaired the task force several years ago that developed these goals, charged by the then-president to create a set of unifying, inspiring ideals for the campus as a whole: goals that would reflect the professional endeavors of all our faculty and staff while also linking students' academic and extracurricular life.
This presidential initiative inspired us to contemplate the foundation of our campus mission: that all of us, regardless of position or rank, bolster our intellectual and critical skills through the continual renewal of disciplinary knowledge; that we think and engage in research creatively and through innovation; that we seek out and strengthen professional connection both locally and globally through interdisciplinary and international initiatives and service; and that we engage in our work and professional relationships with a sense of ethical responsibility. The campus not only adopted these four campus learning goals: we embedded them within a revised campus mission statement.
The current administration, following the example of the SUNY Chancellor and Board of Trustees (see similar cuts at SUNY Potsdam), has violated the spirit and letter of Fredonia's mission, and especially our campus goals, by a thoughtless process of publicly announcing the proposed deactivation of programs that are at the heart of Fredonia's identity as an institution of higher learning, without any prior discussion, consideration of the wider damaging implications on other programs, or engaging in a process of collaborative dialogue with the impacted campus constituencies.
Stripping away signature programs in the humanities, social sciences, visual arts, and education erodes Fredonia's liberal arts and science foundation, the very heart of the university: these are programs that contribute to the skills, creativity, connectedness and integrity of our very mission and impact every student and faculty member regardless of discipline.
By starving the liberal arts of support and allowing them to wither and die through attrition, we collapse the core of the university's identity and dismantle its long-standing leadership in education, the visual and performing arts, and sciences.
We weaken our students' ability to engage in critical, creative and interdisciplinary thinking that is a foundation for thoughtful citizenship and a talented workforce; we erode the depth of their engagement with and understanding of a complicated, connected global world. I'm sorry to say that our local College Council has seemingly gone along with this myopic effort. They should be our advocates, but instead they have failed to challenge the state and local administration's questionable approach.
We can avoid further damage if people -- residents of this county, Fredonia alumni, current faculty, staff and students, and yes, members of the College Council -- collectively take action to stand up to this thoughtlessness and demand an administration that thinks and acts creatively and sees "horizontally" and not just "vertically" with its eyes on a manufactured bottom line. We need and deserve an administration -- at the local and SUNY level -- that seeks honest dialogue and collaborates with all campus constituencies to find solutions to the current financial dilemma (created largely by the long disinvestment in SUNY by the state and which Gov. Hochul is wisely attempting to address); that honors the work of generations of leadership by administrators, faculty, professional staff, students and alumni who have made Fredonia a vital regional institution that is about to celebrate its 200th anniversary.
We can and must preserve our liberal arts core, even as we develop new programs that are "in demand" and that support our state mission as well as our preparation of students for the global challenges that define our century.
We can and must preserve the ability of our students to think, learn, and prepare to teach in languages other than English, especially in a region that increasingly serves a Spanish-speaking population. We can and must preserve the opportunities that the visual arts offer all our students, even if these majors are reconfigured and streamlined for greater efficiency. We can and must preserve the human sciences that allow students to understand the intricacies of human cultures and social movements. Without these core areas, new initiatives in health care, business and artificial intelligence will simply be technical training rather than integral parts of a larger mosaic of interconnected intellectual activity and creative exchange.
Once the core foundation and reputation of an institution are gutted, there is little left to build upon. I urge Fredonia alumni to write today to President Stephen Kolison and SUNY Chancellor John King to demand that the announced program cuts be rescinded. I urge county residents and business owners, and members of the College Council, all of whose cultural lives and economic interests are touched by this campus in myriad ways, to take a moment today to let President Kolison and Chancellor King know that these cuts will damage the regional economy, our cultural vibrance, and the educational readiness of Chautauqua County to meet the dynamic challenges facing us. This is a collective fight: please do not be silent.
Jeanette McVicker, Ph.D., is professor of English at SUNY Fredonia.