Cut one, cut them all

A look at life at the university without any departments

As the European Languages and Literatures Department anticipates the budget-cutting ax falling on its neck, I'd like to voice my support for such radical measures with a hearty enthusiasm that borders on giddiness.

I'm glad to see someone is taking extreme action to solve our fiscal woes. Although there would be serious implications that would follow, it would definitely be worth it. Anything that would mean I could escape from my two-year language requirement certainly deserves attention.

Yet why not make cuts in other schools as well? Certainly there must be other areas we can eliminate as well, such as the Art Department.

Who needs art, anyway? All it does is provide some expensive unnecessary beautification for our already financially-beleaguered university.

By looking at the was we maintain our existing works, it's obvious UH places little value on such things.

The art students would surely appreciate us for closing the department. Not only could the money that would have gone toward art supplied be applied to other expenses, upon graduation the students could go out and get "real" jobs in field like hotel management.

Not only that, but incoming students who considered art as a major could be channeled into other fields that have much more practical applications for our state, like Travel Industry Management.

The College of Business Administration, too, could be done away with. That would mean I'd have to change my major from international business to something else, but what the heck -- with this economy it's not like the state really needs us.

Besides, I already have a well-paying job as a waiter in Waikiki that requires zero skills whatsoever/

The College of Education would be the next thing I would cut. If there is ever a shortage of teachers in Hawai`i, we can offer one-year tenures for Mainland teachers to come out, similar to the way the state's nursing program fills its shortfalls.

If there are problems with recruiting, we could sacrifice the quality of education further by including provisions for a four-day weekend.

I realize this would eliminate many professors' jobs at the university, but it's the money that counts, right? Besides, the can then be rotated into the public school sector as replacements in case of attrition.

Although it would mean showing Hawaii's students into already crowded lecture halls depleted of any sense of aloha, if it saves money, it should be considered. And with decreased graduation requirements, we could actually graduate with a four-year degree in four years.

That would give us a heightened sense of accomplishment, yielding a new generation of graduates secure in their abilities.

The only problem is that these proposals depend on the condition that the requirements for graduation be changed, but who's to say the administration would entertain that notion?

If the ELL department experiences any cuts in the number of professors or classes offered without a corresponding decrease in the requirements, it would force students into the East Asian, Southeast Asian, and Hawaiian-Pacific languages.

Since Moore Hall classrooms have a 15-person occupancy limitation, we would have to either move language classes to another building with larger rooms or hire more professors to accommodate the number of sections.

In case of the former, the effectiveness of the remaining classes would suffer, as the student-professor ratio would increase.

If the latter occurred, it would totally defeat the purpose of cutting ELL in the first place, as we would have to train a whole new group of incoming professors while throwing out the more experiences professors already here.

Perhaps we should eliminate all languages from UH. We want to be fair, right? Besides, all those countries out there are learning English anyway.

If we cut ever language department, we could say we're doing it on some sort of ideological grounds, not just because, "we got no money, and Europeans don't matter."

In this way, we send the message, "we are truly international, because we favor no nation or people."

I look forward to the decisions of the Academic Affairs Prioritization Committee. Language classes certainly have one of the lowest student-to-professor ratios in the system, so cutting these departments would concentrate the suffering to the smallest number of students.

I support UH's plan to cut the ELL department, but only if it means I can graduate quicker -- then I'm definitely all for it.

Who cares if we can't accommodate our European or Tahitian visitors? It's not like they matter anyway.