To the editor: We, the undersigned graduate students of the Romance Studies Department, emphatically denounce the recommendations of the Arts & Sciences Curriculum Committee. We lend our support to the Romance Studies Faculty’s unanimous and unambiguous rejection of the current proposal. Beyond the committee’s hasty procedure and failure to adequately consult the many departments who will be affected, our principal concern is the reduction of the language requirement by almost half. The lower undergraduate enrollment in our courses will result in fewer faculty, fewer course offerings and fewer graduate assistantships. This is a direct blow to our funding, our teaching opportunities and our competitiveness on the job market, and threatens the prestige of our program. Apart from our concern for the quality of post-graduate studies at this institution, we would like to emphasize the following: This proposal severely undermines the value of an undergraduate education at Cornell University. It has been suggested that fulfilling the language requirement is difficult for pre-med and science students. We have found our many students from the STEM and pre-med fields to be superb language learners. If the goal is to ease course loads for pre-med students, the curriculum changes will harm those whose very burden they seek to alleviate. Cornell’s own Weill Medical College website explicitly states “proficiency in a second language” in their selection criteria. The extant requirement is as follows: One course at the non-introductory level or 11 credits in a single language. This provides students with the classroom time necessary for advanced engagement with the language and its historical, political and cultural contexts. We speak in defense not only of the languages taught in our department, but the many languages offered at this institution. At stake is a philosophy of learning that respects in-depth engagement with a foreign language and culture, and its replacement with an approach that treats Cornell’s language courses as mere items on a menu. This sabotages the very ideals upon which the committee’s recommendations are predicated: Cornell’s status as a “global university.”
Amanda Recupero, grad, Italian Kelly Camille Moore, grad, Spanish Cristina Hung, grad, Spanish Matías Borg Oviedo, grad, Spanish Andy Leonel Barrientos-Gómez, grad, Spanish & Portuguese Lia Turtas, grad, Italian Patrick Kozey, grad, Spanish Álvaro Garrote Pascual, grad, Spanish Emily C. Vázquez Enríquez, grad, Spanish Alexander Gannuscio, grad, Spanish Elise Finielz, grad, French Félix Miguel Rosario Ortiz, grad, Spanish Gustavo Quintero, grad, Spanish Giulia Andreon, gradi, Italian Brandon Greer, grad, French Janet Hendrickson, grad, Spanish Chenyun Li, grad, Spanish Nicholas Huelster, grad, French Hannah Cole Hughes, grad, French Mario Jimenez Chacon, grad, Spanish Peter Caswell, grad, French Romain Pasquer Brochard, grad, French Julia Karczewski, grad, French Jackqueline Frost, grad, French Mary Jane Dempsey, grad, Italian Vincent Guimiot, grad, French Eliana Hernández-Pachón, grad, Spanish. Magdala Lissa Jeudy, grad, French Yen Vu, grad, French Sam Carter, grad, Spanish Alex Lenoble, grad, French Sebastian Antezana, grad, Spanish Ebtisam Mursi, grad, Spanish Valeria Dani, grad, Italian Antonio di Fenza, grad, Italian Heftzi Vázquez Rodríguez, grad, Spanish Martina Broner, grad, Spanish Penelope Rosenstock-Murav, grad, French Paulo Lorca, grad, Spanish
