The faculty will vote by mail-in ballot on the Educational Policy and Governance Committee’s [EPAG] proposal to discontinue the Russian Department, following a heated third and final debate at this week’s faculty meeting.

Faculty votes are due to EPAG on Monday.

Several people commented on the exceptional turnout at Wednesday’s meeting, which was attended by over 20 students as well as an unusually high number of faculty.

Before turning to a discussion on the future of the Russian department, the faculty first debated EPAG’s unprecedented motion to conduct the vote by mail-in, secret ballots. EPAG Chair Gary Krueger pointed out that this has been the advertised mode of voting since November, when the Russian debate began.

Several faculty, however, expressed discomfort with switching to this method, which the faculty has never used before for such a significant decision.

“We would be setting a fairly substantial precedent that changes Macalester from an embodied community to a virtual one,” said International Studies Professor David Chioni Moore. “That is too important a change to happen in a six-minute debate.” He added that such a motion most likely reflects the interests of a specific outcome. “The defenders of Russian are disproportionately represented here,” he said. “A move towards a mail ballot is a move toward the opposition voting.”

German Professor Ellis Dye echoed echoed Moore’s assertion. “EPAG does have a dog in this fight,” he said, “and they are counting on the vote of the uninformed.”

EPAG member and History Professor David Itzkowitz reminded the faculty that many people had assumed that there would in fact be a mail-in vote and that holding the vote at the meeting would betray those who had not attended under that impression.

The faculty contentiously approved EPAG’s motion to hold the ballot by mail in the eventual vote, and went on to continue the debate over the Russian Department that began at October’s faculty meeting.

Russian Department Chair Gitta Hammarberg presented her remarks first, in a passionate speech that drew enthusiastic applause from those in attendance.

She responded to EPAG’s consistent emphasis on low enrollments, noting that they are currently on the rise, and that this year’s enrollments more than double those of last year. “If enrollments are indeed the crux of the matter, please, look at them,” she said, pointing out that enrollments are now higher than they were in 1988, when the faculty decided to expand the Russian department.

Hammarberg reminded the faculty that passing the motion would gain only one temporary position and would deny the school not only language courses but also classes in literature and culture.

“Voting for the motion would make Macalester the only one of our 15 comparison schools and all the schools ranked above us by US News and World Report not to recognize the centrality of Russian to a liberal arts education,” she said.

Hammarberg concluded her remarks on a light note, with a quote from a short story by Jhumpa Lahiri, in which a son’s failure to read the Russian literature, as his grandfather advises, dooms the rest of his life. “I hope that Macalester will not make the same mistake,” she said.

German Department Chair and Professor Linda Schulte-Sasse then presented her case in support of Russian. She mentioned the faculty’s policy never to eliminate a major “by accident,” and asserted that several central factors in the current debate are in fact accidental.

She first cited the departure three years ago of tenured professor Rachel May, which resulted in the elimination of that position. She also pointed to the current Soviet-style “defection” of tenured Russian professor Jim von Geldern.

Von Geldern is currently attending law school and would like to utilize his legal skills in a different department, such as International Studies.

“We have been assured that Jim’s decision is secondary,” Schulte-Sasse said, “but I do not doubt that it is one of several driving factors pressing the motion.”

EPAG member and Provost Dan Hornbach later refuted Schulte-Sasse’s assertion, requesting an apology to EPAG for the accusation that its members would so heavily weigh an individual’s situation.

Krueger also disputed her characterization of May’s role in the process as “accidental.” “I would argue that the Rachel May departure was no accident. She left to do Environmental Studies; that’s indicative of something,” he said.

Hammarberg later clarified that May in fact left for personal reasons, and that she is still an active Russian scholar.

Schulte-Sasse vehemently refuted EPAG’s concentration on statistics. “Where is Macalester headed if we start deleting departments based the numbers?” she asked. “We all know that the demand principle contradicts the liberal arts.”

She referred to President Rosenberg’s evasive comment to the faculty at November’s meeting that the school “not shy away from change simply because it is change.” She said that a logical extension of his remark would be “nor should you pursue change simply because it is change.’”

Ahmed Samatar, Professor of International Studies and Dean of International Studies and Programming, spoke in support of the motion to eliminate Russian. “We have to distinguish between the dictatorship of numbers and the logic of numbers,” he said. “We have arrived to confront the logic of numbers.”

Moore responded to statements at previous faculty meetings that eliminating Russian would allow Macalester to pursue more “exciting” languages, such as Arabic or Chinese.

Moore said he doubted whether these programs would attract higher enrollments than Russian, due to the similar difficulty of these languages. He also said he is not confident that the development of these departments is certain. “I don’t get the sense that the demise of Russian would result in the rise of other departments,” he said. “I do not want to see a net reduction of modern languages taught at the college.”

Hammarberg said that she had hoped the vote would take place at the meeting, but that the mail-in ballots would not just favor the opposition. She said that she did not like the idea of “secret” voting. “I think you need to stand up for your beliefs,” she said.

Students in attendance also expressed frustration at the potential demise of Russian. “I chose Macalester because I knew I could major in Russian and because of the strong International Studies program here,” Betsy Engebretson ’07 said. “Macalester prided itself on internationalism and multiculturalism, and that was what I wanted. To cut Russian would diminish this commitment to internationalism—Russian opens up Russia, Central and Eastern Europe and Central Asia; without the language, you wouldn’t be able to understand the cultures in a large part of the world.”

“It’s interesting that they waited until the second to last speaker to discuss the international component of Macalester, which I thought was Macalester’s main contribution,” Elizabeth Everson ’05 said. “At a school that commits to studying foreign cultures, that we would cut a widely used and historically respectable program is laughable.”