Just before 8 a.m. on Nov. 22, a group of students, primarily communicative disorders and sciences majors, gathered outside of Erwin Hall to begin a day-long protest of the decision to deactivate programs.
“This demonstration is to get the administration to realize that they have made a huge mistake,” said one of the events’ organizers, sophomore Yael Massen.
President Christopher Dahl’s appeal to Geneseo’s mission as a public liberal arts college was a source of much discontent among protesters.
“We certainly see the importance of liberal arts … but if you take out professional programs, you’re left with about half the students,” said communicative disorders and sciences professor Bob Owens.
“Community is one of those banners of Geneseo,” Massen said. “I know [the communicative disorders and sciences] department affects the community more than any other. We’re leaving Livingston County out to dry and abandoning people in need.”
A chief concern among protesters addressed the situation faced by currently enrolled and recently accepted communicative disorders and sciences graduate students. “We don’t have an option to transfer like undergrads,” said graduate student Lora Emel. “We didn’t come here for liberal arts; we came here for speech.”
Many of the attendees voiced support for the faculty and staff in the deactivated departments. “If you go anywhere else, they use books written by our professors,” Emel said. “We have the real thing here.”
A number of students from the studio art and computer science majors joined the protest along with students from departments that were not deactivated.
Senior studio art major Aileen Connorton said that the decision is bad for morale. “It’s a loss of motivation,” she said. “It’s like the school is telling us that we’re expendable.”
Throughout the day-long protest, communicative disorders and sciences faculty joined the students. Owens rallied the crowd. “I want you all to know they are liars,” he repeated. “We’re central to the mission and we’re the only thing this college is known for.” Owens gave several examples of prestige of the program, faculty and students. “You don’t make the college better by killing the best program in it,” he said.
“The students] have been wonderful in bonding together. I think that’s something the college can learn from them,” Owens said. “Had [the administration] spread out the pain, we’d all be bound together.”
Owens said that he and other faculty from the department had made suggestions to the administration regarding several alternatives the college could have implemented to match the $2 million the cuts are projected to save, calling these ideas “simple solutions to spread out the pain.”
Dahl responded to the sit-in: “I think the sit-in was a good thing in that students and faculty expressed their rights to free speech and assembly, and that’s something that I support.”