Dear Vice-Dean Baker,
I am emailing you in response to the questionnaire that you sent out earlier today to address our concerns about the proposed School of Languages and Literatures. As a student in the Centre for Comparative Literature, whose research is also rooted in the Department East Asian Studies, I am in solidarity with the many other students who have already voiced shock and dismay regarding the decision to disestablish and restructure our disciplines. I am sure you have had the chance to read through many of the letters of protest, each of which I am proud to say is intelligent, articulate, well-argued, and persuasive in pointing out many of the troubling features of your office’s proposal. Whether or not it is to your benefit in these circumstances, I believe we can both agree upon the sophistication of the students being produced by the departments you intend to dismantle. I cannot say that such a high calibre of students will be sustained if the proposed changes go through, but as it stands, I hope you realize that you have your work cut out for you trying to pull the wool over the eyes of these ones.
Obviously, my colleagues and I have many questions and concerns. However, if it was your intention to assuage our fears with this recent questionnaire, I think you will soon see that is has not achieved its intended effect. That we are being asked to accept platitudinous answers to questions that are being posed for us in the form of prefabricated questionnaire is offensive to all those who have a real stake in the programs that are being dismantled. Not only were we not able to voice our concerns during the planning stages -- we were not made aware of the plan -- but now we are having our concerns voiced for us. I am sure you have read the many letters of protest that are being sent your way, and yet this questionnaire addresses none of their genuine, albeit difficult, concerns, or responds to any of the legitimate problems with the structure of the new school that they have been pointing out. The questionnaire said you would adapt to new questions as they are posed to you; I think it would also be a gesture of goodwill to address the many difficult questions that have already been posed in these letters.
One of my questions therefore is whether our real questions will get answers. Will you take what we really have to say seriously? For me, this means “is the proposal itself up for discussion?” Nowhere have I seen any indication that there is room for discussion surrounding the proposal itself. This questionnaire addresses concerns about the effects of the proposal, but it does not question the validity of the proposal. It seems as if it's a done deal, but is this true? What about the more fundamental question, then: “will you still give us a chance to defend the existence our disciplines?” Or, are we already doomed?
I have many other questions -- about the methodological focus of the new school, about what this will mean for the reputation of the University of Toronto as a centre for progressive academic research, about the actual value our degrees will have coming out of the death throes of a defunct program, etc. -- but many of these questions have already been well articulated in several of the protest letters, and I will not reiterate them here. What I would like to ask, then, in closing, is whether or not the Office of the Dean will be willing to reverse the evasive tactic of this questionnaire by agreeing to actually meet with students, face-to-face, in order to genuinely work through some of our serious concerns. We would like to be able to ask you our own questions, and voice our own concerns, in a format where real dialogue is possible. Such a genuine act of goodwill would do much to correct the lack of democratic and transparent decision making procedure that has characterized the establishment of this proposal up to this point.
With tribulation,
Darcy Gauthier
PhD student, Centre for Comparative Literature, UofT
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