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.