Letter: Honor Thy Dean

On the evening of February the 23rd, I returned home to find a pile of neglected mail awaiting me. One such neglected letter came from the School of the Arts and Sciences, directly. I opened the letter.

It began:

"Dear Mr. Farr,

I write to you on behalf of Dean Andrew Newcomb, in his 10th and final year. [...] Over the decade Andy has spent at the helm of the School of Arts & Sciences, there have been many projects that mattered deeply to him -- none more so than increasing opportunities for University of Richmond students to participate in undergraduate research. [...] students commit to dedicating 40 hours per week to independent research over the course of the summer. All students enjoy close contact with a faculty mentor who serves as a guide throughout the experience."

I was floored. Undoubtedly, some of you have not heard the recent announcement (because it was only quietly "announced" via a small change on some part of the Richmond website). The dean has decided to eliminate the annual funding for the Richmond policy debate team. What was once a fully-funded, fully-staffed, highly nationally ranked, award-winning debate team -- collectively responsible for producing hundreds of pages of research on broad and timely policy topics, per year -- has been stripped of its coaches and financial backing. A multi-generational program, and one of the only forms of research oriented debate at the collegiate level, had been reduced to a "club" and -- soliciting input from neither team members nor the broader student body -- was told that a mandatory shift to a non-evidentiary parliamentary model would, in the words of Dean Newcomb, "provide the best opportunities for student learning at the University of Richmond."

My frustration had only just begun, as the letter continued:

"The literature (along with years of experience) tells us that these research opportunities matter to students."

What "literature"?

"In 2001, the year Andy became dean, the School of Arts & Sciences allocated $102,000 to underwrite summer research fellowships. In 2011, that number has more than quadrupled; we have allocated $440,000 to support summer research fellowships and anticipate funding the projects of more than 230 students this summer. We have been able to make such incredible progress over the past 10 years, in large part, because of Andy's excitement[.]"

At this point I was infuriated. Andy's excitement? In October 2010, Andy wrote to the debate team:

"While the University of Richmond has been fortunate to be less affected by the world financial troubles than most other institutions, we have not been immune to the need to make budget reductions and resource reallocations. These needs call upon us all to make difficult choices about how best to use our resources to advance our academic mission."

Where was this "excitement" six months ago when Andy was given the recommendation to eliminate the research-intensive policy debate team? Where was Andy's "excitement" that now seems immune to "world financial troubles" whilst quadrupling the funding for summer research fellowships? Was this the aim of the needed "reallocation" of resources that Andy rubber-stamped in his letter to the debate team?

Surely this was the reallocation Andy had meant, since it was quickly dismissed that the funds freed up from firing the team's coach, Kevin Kuswa, were not the same funds "reallocated" back into the Rhetoric Department Chair's budget for the search and hire of a new tenured faculty to fill a "suddenly vacant position"? Surely this reallocation would not have been put toward what he later promised would be the "spring programming" that would "facilitate the move to parliamentary debate"?

It is not difficult to mistake Andy's "excitement" for a budgetary shell-game going on within the office of the School of the Arts and Sciences. Cut a student-liked, lower-salaried Director of Debate to create a more prestigious tenured position, eliminate an award-winning undergraduate research activity's budget (due to "financial troubles") to later quadruple summer research fellowship grants...

For me, the end of the letter was the real twist of the knife:

"When you give a gift to the School of Arts & Sciences this spring, it does two important things. It honors Dean Andy Newcomb and his decade of commitment to increasing undergraduate research opportunities at the University of Richmond, and it makes the opportunities he cares so deeply about available to even more students." (Emphasis mine)

It is clear to me that Andy's enthusiasm is not the enthusiasm of the students. The letter, in addition to his initially cold and uncompromising announcement to the debate team, repeats a theme so mind-bogglingly out of touch with what I once thought to be the premise of a privatized liberal arts education: to serve the needs and aspirations of the students.

I believe I share the opinion of at least some significant minority of alumni that the "market colonization"[*1] of the Office of the Dean represents a sad and disgraceful way to end a decade of -- what we thought -- was an unmovable commitment to the students in the defense of existing undergraduate research programs. There was once an extracurricular program designed to train its undergraduates to do what this country needs most right now: informed democratic debate. The university seems more keen on enhancing more marketable opportunities at the moment.

The university has no right to request funding from alumni if its decisions for which programs that money goes to are made behind closed doors with seemingly political or self-interested motives.[*2]

I shall not honor this.

James Farr,

Class of 2010.

1. Gordon, Lewis R. "The Market Colonization of Intellectuals." Truthout, 6 April 2010. Web: http://www.truth-out.org/the-market-colonization-intellectuals58310.

2. Much evidence of which cannot be reported due to the very secretive nature of how decisions like these are made by the upper echelons of the administration.