University of Virginia Library

Faculty Fiefdoms

Faculty politics would make a fascinating
study. Long shrouded in academic privacy, a
few of the tactics and practices are coming to
light in the current debate over the College
Curriculum. As it often is in the halls of
government, the political game is rarely
played for the benefit of those effected by its
results. The decision by the College Faculty to
retain the present language requirement is a
case in point.

When all the flowery rhetoric about the
necessity for an educated man to know a
foreign language was over, the argument that
really influenced the assembled scholars was
presented by Mr. Douglas Alden, Chairman of
the Romance Languages Department. Mr.
Alden pointed out that the number of
students who take foreign languages would
decline rapidly if the requirement were
abolished. This in turn would inflict a
body-blow at the department's graduate
program. So the poor undergraduate is going
to be used as a pawn to preserve the precious
graduate studies program.

Mr. Alden was right when he said that
undergraduates wouldn't take the programs
offered unless forced to do so. Undergraduates
are intelligent enough to know that not
everyone in this day of computer translation
needs to know a foreign language. They are
also intelligent enough to realize that they
aren't going to master the language in the
three semesters they're required to take. A
language must be learned by living it, and the
amount learned in the courses now offered is
simply forgotten by graduation. It's not worth
the time put into it for all, but the students
who go on in the language. Moreover, students
know a lousy program when they see one, and
they can see that the introductory language
programs are uninspired offerings which the
department maintains solely to support its
graduate students. Graduate students provide
a raison d'etre for tenured personnel, and
that's where the department poobahs' concern
for undergraduate education comes in.

A number of other departments in the
College have this sort of system going for
them so the Romance Languages were able to
generate enough support to keep the requirement.
That's what academic politics is all
about. Students will still be dragged by the
scruff of their necks into introductory
language courses. It would be nice if the
Department made an effort to give them
something worth their time.