Me and Bill Gracie working on my thesis, 2004

Western isn’t perfect, as you know, and we should not idealize it in a sentimental way. The hard fact is that it is better than much you will experience elsewhere. [...] The essence of Western College is hard to catch. It cannot be bought. It cannot be sold. It cannot be captured. It cannot be mimicked. It is too spirited, too lively, too full of zest for that. Think of it carried comfortably by each of you wherever you may be around the world, next September or fifty years from now.—Dean Hoyt of the original Western College, 1974

I got my undergrad degree at the School of Interdisciplinary Studies (aka The Western College Program, known to its friends simply as “Western”) at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. Long-time readers of this blog will know that Miami has decided to dismantle the program for a variety of reasons—mainly, stupidity, greed, and politics. (Read my previous posts on the subject.)

In the past four years, it’s become so crystal clear to me what a tremendous impact that place had on my life. It was a living/learning paradise—beautiful dorms, classrooms, and campus, small class sizes, and most importantly, terrific people. I met some of my best friends there, met my wife there, and got married there. I wouldn’t be who I am without it, and it tears me up to think that it won’t be around for future students.

My friend and teacher, retiring Dean Bill Gracie, had some final words for the program in his speech to the Western College for Women Reunion, June 16, 2008:

The decision in 2006 to remove the School of Interdisciplinary Studies from Miami was a decision of surpassing irrationality and foolishness. It has effectively destroyed Western as we have known it and loved it and it has damaged Miami itself. In my nearly 40 years of work in the English department, in the Office of Liberal Education, and in the School of Interdisciplinary Studies I cannot cite a more pathological act or crueler experience than the one all of us witnessed and endured two years ago: our students were betrayed; our faculty and staff were displaced; our alumnae and alumni were bewildered, and—in some cases—alienated forever from Miami. I was ashamed to be a member of an academic administration that behaved so dishonorably.

If it is true that many of the charges pressed against us two years ago were false (and demonstrably false), it is also true (demonstrably true) that the young men and women of the Western College Program continue to impress us with their intelligence, imagination, and unpredictability. As they have for so many years, Western College Program students win University recognition in numbers that are entirely disproportionate; in other words, Miami’s smallest division wins more than its fair share of awards. We like that. In the past three years, the percentage of seniors graduating from Western with Latin honors cum laude, magna cum laude, summa cum laude was higher than the percentage of such students in the School of Engineering, the Farmer School of Business, and the College of Arts and Science itself. In the past six years, Western seniors have been named recipients of the Goldman Award, arguably the University’s most prestigious
post-baccalaureate award, three times; John Obricyki, who attended this afternoon’s luncheon, is the most recent Goldman winner. In fact, twenty-five percent of the Goldman winners in the past 16 years have been Western students.

The decision to close the School of Interdisciplinary Studies seems odder now than it did even in the summer of 2006. But tonight is not the time nor the occasion to analyze that decision at length. Some future study of the tragedy will surely be written, and, perhaps at that point, we will learn what motivated the University to destroy a small and cherished part of its own history.

Not only has Miami destroyed a terrific program and a beautiful history, they’re destroying the physical environment as well. Here’s a flickr set of photos showing where they’ve graveled over the beautiful lawn/commons area where we used to check in for orientation, fly kites, hang, play kickball…

(Kumler Chapel, in the background, is where Meg and I got married.)

I hate to resort to cliche, but:

Don’t it always seem to go
that you don’t know what you got ’til it’s gone
they paved paradise
put up a parking lot.

Note: this clip is NSFW. It includes f-bombs and poop jokes.

James Francis Flynn is a filmmaker and friend of mine who lives in Chicago. Eastern College is his first feature film—a comedy based on his experiences as a student in the soon-to-be-defunct Western College Program at Miami University, where we both went to college.

I have been bugging Flynn to post this excerpt to Youtube for a while now, as I thought it was the funniest part of the movie, and has the added benefit of standing on its own as a short. Noah Applebaum cracks me up—his was the standout performance, and I would hope that we’ll see a lot more of him in the future.

Flynn also has a blog called Thoughts on Films, where he is making his way through The Writer’s Guild of America’s 101 Greatest Screenplays List. His reviews are always well worth reading, and you should check them out.

Yesterday, President Hodge announced that Western will become a program in Miami University’s College of Arts and Sciences in July 2008. We were all hoping that it would become a department in CAS, but beggars (supplicants?) can’t be choosers. Whatever else WesternLite© is going to look like, they’ve promised a self-designed major, a living/learning community based in Peabody Hall, a core faculty, and a culminating senior project and Senior Conference.

The crucial step will be re-designing the curriculum. I’m assuming that since Western will be a program in CAS, it will have to stick closer to the “Miami Plan” than in the past. This will probably mean a more robust science requirement, along with a foreign language. I personally think it’s a crime that Western didn’t previously require foreign language courses — in a setting where multi-culturalism is supposedly such a value, why would students not be required to learn the language of another culture? Surely, it would be a better exercise than some lame seminar on colonialism…

Yesterday, I had coffee with a creative writing teacher, and we were talking about how well groomed all college students are these days — they have all the right grades, all the right extra-curriculars…but they don’t know a damned thing. They don’t have any truly interesting experiences. Western wasn’t immune from this overall phenomenon, but it still tended to attract more offbeat, quirky, somewhat intelligent and freethinking students than main campus. With Western “integrated” into CAS, who knows what’s in store.

All in all, I’d call this a small victory. We’ll see what happens.

Jordan Tate attended Miami University’s Western College Program and earned a Bachelor of Philosophy in Interdisciplinary Studies in 2003. He is currently an M.F.A. candidate at Indiana University’s Henry Radford Hope School of Fine Arts. Some of his work is held in the permanent collection at the Kinsey Institute for Gender, Sex, and Reproduction.

I don’t really know Jordan, but I was impressed by his undergraduate photography show (2003…I would’ve been a sophomore at the time). This book not only seems like a real riot, but some of the pictures below (taken from the book’s Myspace page) are of people I went to school with. See how many of the euphemisms you can name:

The Contemporary Dictionary of Sexual Euphemisms is out from St. Martin’s Press on January 9th. I just pre-ordered mine.

Coming out of darkness over here to post an editorial that ran in the Cincinnati Enquirer today. Ms. Reutter expresses my own suspicions: that the move to squash Western was one of political payback. Check it out.

Miami loses by eliminating school

By Claire Reutter

I am a Miami University graduate from the 1980s grieving the loss of a dear friend who made an indelible impression on my life. My alma mater, the School of Interdisciplinary Studies (or the Western College Program), is slated to close (”Last pitch fails; trustees dissolve Western College,” June 24).

The news came suddenly to the Western community of alumni and students, who were shocked when they got the first word in the spring that this might happen. The outgoing Miami president and his administration overturned a 40-6 University Senate vote that called for a study next year to explore issues such as low enrollment. Instead, the school will be eliminated no later than June 30, 2008.

What’s in it for an outgoing university president to squelch dialogue and rush through closure of this dynamic liberal arts college that Barron’s Buys considers to be one of Miami University’s two stongest programs (the other one being its School of Business)?

Well, Miami’s dining hall and maintenance employees had a strike. Not surprisingly, several faculty members and students in the School of Interdisciplinary Studies - which has always concerned itself with social justice - supported it.

So now it’s payback time, and the outgoing president can make sure that the incoming president has one less thorn in his side, one less dissenting voice that suggests that even the menial laborers deserve a fair share.

I shudder to think where I would be now if it weren’t for my alma mater. Many of my colleagues attended Miami solely because of the Western Program.

One thing is certain: Without an entity that speaks up for what is right, Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, will become more of a monoculture than ever before.

Claire Reutter has moved back to the Cincinnati area after four years in Maui, Hawaii, where she worked as a teacher, a writer, and a public librarian. She now lives in Clifton with two sisters, her husband and their 4-year-old son.

A sober and thoughtful response to the news of Western’s demise was printed in the Columbus Dispatch today. Here is the nicely-summarizing meat:

The Western program comprises about 1 percent of Miami’s student body but contributes about 10 percent of the honors students…

Two reviews found the program not without flaws but still worth preserving; Barron’s Best Buys in College Education, Eighth Edition, calls it one of Miami’s two strongest programs (the other being the School of Business), and yet an ad hoc committee recommended its closure.

Western is charged with being too expensive, but it is by no means the most expensive program at Miami. It is charged with not drawing enough admissions, but last year the Miami admissions office prohibited Western from recruiting directly from high schools, while still claiming that Western is primarily responsible for its own recruitment. When the transparency of the evaluation process was called into question, a lawyer gained access, via the Ohio Public Records Act, to 1,500 pages of relevant documentation and concluded that indeed, the process had not been open at all.

The University Senate passed, 40-6 with no abstentions, a resolution calling for a further year of study without any other action being taken; it was overruled by the administration — an unusual move, as the Senate exists to deal with academic matters. At every turn, the facts seem to support at least a more detailed evaluation not only of the Western program but also of the decisionmaking process.

Michael Conaway from Union, N.J.: kudos to you.

Hays Cummins and Chris Wolfe have been working on a “Plan B” to try to salvage whatever can be salvaged from the old program for the new, and kudos to them, too. They’re good guys with a lot invested in Western.

But oh, more I think about it all, the angrier I get.

Meg was particularly angry when she heard the news. She was an architecture student, but it was the community life at Western that kept her at Miami. Otherwise, she would’ve split. So you’ve got a couple whose lives would’ve been totally different without Western.

It’s no wonder I’ve been harping about this so much.

The great point that’s been made over and over: it’s not only past, present, and future Western students who suffer from this decision, it’s really everyone at Miami.

But maybe Miami doesn’t deserve what it had. Who knows.

“The process of writing will always be trying to repair something that doesn’t exist with tools you have to invent on the spot.” I read that quote by George Saunders (from an interview with Fugue) right after I read the Dispatch piece.

I’m not sure what exactly it has to do with Western, but it sure as hell seems to fit.

Kumler Chapel, Western Campus, Miami University

Last Friday, Miami University’s Board of Trustees voted 10-0 in favor of accepting President Garland’s bs recommendation that the Western College Program (School of Interdisciplinary Studies and my alma mater) be eliminated as an academic division. (Here are reports from the Columbus Dispatch, Cincinnati Enquirer, Dayton Daily News, and Hamilton Journal News.) This comes as a disgusting, but not shocking, blow, and will probably forever taint my feelings towards the university which had previously been very, very generous to me.

While I had remarkable professors, friends, classes, and experiences on Main Campus, it was Western that drew me to Miami, and it was Western that made my time there what it was. I met my wife on Western, I met some of my best friends on Western, and I discovered my personal, artistic, and academic voice on Western.

Were I looking at colleges now, there’s no way I would ever end up at Miami.

It was never any secret that the Western program had its problems: a stale curriculum, a weak recruiting and marketing campaign, and a faculty that lacked fresh blood. But despite its shortcomings, the living-learning community and the academic freedom afforded to its students made it not only a unique program, but an essential one: a kind of free-thinking, risk-taking, radical antidote to an otherwise bland, uninspired, and conservative student body. (I’ve made this argument before.)

It seems clear to me that the real reason Western is being dismantled is a political one. Western students are extremely politically active, and made up the overwhelming majority of the dissenting political voice on campus. In 2003, the janitors and dining hall workers of AFSCME Local 209 went on a wage strike, and several of the leading students aiding the effort were Westerners. Same thing with the war. Western has always been a thorn in the side of the administration, and with a conservative President and Provost so fundamentally opposed to the major pillars of liberal education, some prophetically inclined could have seen this coming.

AIDS, Bird Flu, West Nile…forget ‘em. Worry about Greed and Stupidity. Because they are the diseases that will destroy us. And they are trickling down from the very top to the very bottom.

They will infect everything.

I suppose there is still a glimmer of hope: the proposed Honors College could actually include an souped-up version of Western, but what was known as Western is probably about to disappear in the next couple years. I’m moved to quote Toni Morrison in her first book, SULA: “Maybe it hadn’t been a community, but it had been a place.” But Western was both a community AND a place, so that quote doesn’t apply.

To those current Westerners still reaping the benefits of a fantastic place, Good Night and Good Luck. Hang in there.

To the Board, President Garland, Provost Herbst, and those Woody Guthrie called, “all you fascists bound to lose,” Good Riddance.

So long Western.

President Garland has announced his recommendation that the Western College Program be eliminated as an academic division at Miami University. Read the full text. Obviously, this wasn’t unexpected, but it strikes me as a spineless move, announced during final exams, when students have little time and energy left to be heard, and right before Jimmy goes on a permanent vacation. The whole thing makes me sick.

Dear Drs. Garland and Herbst,

I think it’s reasonable to assume that your inboxes have recently been flooded with e-mail from concerned students, professors, alumni, and friends of the Western College Program. Let me add my e-mail to the batch, not only as a recent Western graduate, but as a former Harrison Scholar and recipient of the Provost’s Academic Achievement Award.

It would be a waste of time for me to further sing to you the praises of Western’s academic program: the university as a whole has already adopted Western’s long-practiced liberal education policy, interest in interdisciplinary inquiry, and emphasis on living-learning communities. The big question seems to be: why should Miami pay 3 times more per student so that Western majors can experience this wonderful education?

You wouldn’t have caught me dead in a business or marketing class at Miami, but I believe the answer lies in branding. This became clear to me after watching a DVD endorsed by U.S. News and Reports and put out by the WB network, called THE U: EVERYTHING YOU WANTED TO KNOW ABOUT COLLEGE BUT WERE AFRAID TO ASK. (I’m not making this up, if you haven’t already, you can get your copy at www.theu.com.) Miami is featured on the Midwest Colleges DVD, and here’s the summary:

Miami University likes to think of itself as the Harvard of Ohio, but, it’s better to think of this school as what Harvard would be if you moved it west, dropped it in a cornfield, kicked out all the nerds*, and added a lot of hotties rocking the popped collar. Yeah.

*I’m guessing by nerds, they mean academics.

This too was my nightmare vision of Miami as a high school senior (although I don’t think people were popping their collars at that time). Sure, it’s a stereotype, but stereotype is everything in this culture. I had three full-ride offers to outstanding universities, and I chose Miami only because I found my way to the Western College Program. As my mother likes to say, “I wouldn’t have let you go there, otherwise.”

The year I received the Provost’s Academic Achievement Award, three out of the dozen recipients were Western majors: a higher percentage than any other academic division. Western provides an “alternative” brand to the stereotypical beer-guzzling-red-brick-and-pink-polo-shirts Miami brand. This alternative brand attracts top students like myself, who contribute to greater improvement of the intellectual environment, which boosts Miami’s reputation, which then attracts even more top students.

There is your payoff.

Eliminating Western will eliminate students like me. Please, for the greater good of Miami University, do not take any drastic actions. Give Western a chance to improve within the recommendations of the Winkler committee. The greatest minds of my generation are not going to attend a college universally dubbed J. CREW U. without it.

Sincerely,

Austin Kleon

Class of 2005