Hundreds of West Virginia University students staged a protest Monday, wearing red T-shirts and hoods to symbolize their connection to striking coal miners a century ago. administrative proposal Cut the majors by 9 percent in a $45 million budget gap.
Kelly Ward, a second-year master’s student in creative writing, joined the crowd outside the Morgantown school’s student union in chanting “stop the cuts,” calling the state’s flagship university’s plan to eliminate world languages and dozens of other programs “ridiculous” and “madness” “.
“To me, canceling these shows just means they’re trying to continue to silence Appalachian voices and Appalachian stories,” she said, holding up a sign that read “Writers Don’t Forget.”
Ward said the school administration is simply proving to West Virginia natives and Appalachians that “money is worth more than their stories.”
“That’s what has been said for many, many years, so it’s very, very disheartening to see that,” she said. “I don’t think I can even fully express it in words.”
Earlier this month, the university proposed eliminating 32 majors and 7 percent of Morgantown’s faculty, which equates to $7 million in funding proposed staff cuts. The university said the proposed program cuts would affect 434 students, or 2 percent of total enrollment. Critics say the figure should be higher because it only counts students whose first major is in one of the affected programs.
“I know this is an extremely stressful time for our campus,” Marian Reed, the university’s provost and vice chancellor for academic affairs, said at a meeting of the Senate Executive Committee on Faculty late Monday. “I just think the emotions are running very high right now. These are serious decisions we’re considering.”
Chancellor E. Gordon Gee and other senior university officials said the budget shortfall is largely the result of declining enrollment. Since 2015, WVU has seen a 10 percent decrease in student enrollment.
Heck, who said he would resign after contract expires In 2025, he told the Faculty Senate that the university will make changes regardless of the deficit.
“I said in 2020, we need to do these things to be a competitive university on the national stage,” Gee said.
The move is seen in West Virginia largest population decline Any US state from 2010 to 2020.this is the only one fewer residents now compared to 1950.
The West Virginia Union Student Union organizes separate assemblies on campus. Organizers said they want to halt the university’s planned cuts, seek an independent audit of its finances and reduce WVU’s administrative spending. They also called on the state to increase spending on areas such as higher education.
Students are encouraged to wear red in honor of the red hoods worn by West Virginia coal miners during the protest. they marched on blair hillIt was the largest armed uprising since the American Civil War.
Maileen Sadler of Lincoln County, who wears a hood around her neck, said young people need leaders to provide more opportunity in the state, not “take it away.”
“I think it’s just devaluing and causing the brain drain that we’ve seen — it’s ridiculous,” said Sadler, who majored in political science and philosophy and minored in women’s and gender studies. “Kids are stuck in these rural communities, and a lot of us are looking to the military or colleges to get us out of here and let us learn something new.”
Jennifer Lawrence is a local dance studio owner and a graduate of West Virginia University with a BA and MA in French. state.
“To me, it’s really going to happen on a national level, and we’re just on the front lines of it,” she said.
The university said it had little interest in eliminating the world languages, literatures and linguistics department. These include BAs in French and Spanish as well as Chinese, German and Russian Studies, as well as MA programs in Linguistics and Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages.
Professor Lisa Di Bartolomeo, who coordinates the Russian Studies and Slavic and Eastern European Studies programs, urged others to make a request to the university to continue all language programmes. The long-term impact on West Virginia students could be huge, she said.
“I don’t understand how it avoids driving people out of the state, and I think the impact on students in West Virginia is top-down,” she said Monday. “I think what’s coming is going to exacerbate the brain drain that’s been going on in West Virginia for decades. Young people in West Virginia have less and less options for their future.”
The WVU Board of Trustees is scheduled to make a final recommendation on Sept. 15. Staff and faculty layoff letters will be sent in mid-October.
Anna Schles, who grew up in Charleston and graduated in May from the university’s creative writing master’s program, said the cuts were “a devaluation of the value of a liberal arts education.”
“I think there’s a wave of anti-intellectualism going on in this country, and it’s really hard to see because there’s nothing wrong with being educated and learning stuff,” she said. “It makes people more isolated and poorer, and I think cruelty is one of the reasons for that.”
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Raby reported from Charleston, West Virginia.
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