Editor:

I’ve been trying to understand how this restructuring is occurring with so little regard for our history and charisma – especially how we are losing one of the marks of that charisma, City College.

Loyola’s founding commitment has been to this region, with very few opportunities for Catholic, much less Jesuit, education. As an institution, we have taken those values very seriously, trying to enact as well as teach them: from treating staff justly to SORC salary adjustments, from LUCAP to the Twomey Center. We have tried never to forget our dependence on this city and our need to serve its people.

As we have aimed at becoming a nationally-known, elite institution, we did keep some visible remnants of our relationship with our poor and under-educated city – including City College, a marginalized division with some innovative (and not well-understood) programs in nursing, ministry, computer information and criminal justice and some (even less understood) experiments in online and accelerated learning.

City College has been a critical manifestation of our charisma and our historic relationship to New Orleans, even as the other undergraduate colleges have provided the higher tuitions and national profiles needed to keep us solvent. The present restructuring reflects little appreciation for our history and mission and place; in fact, there’s not been much thought about any of the details and even less about executing such a drastic transition.

This plan pretty much casts our part-time adult students into the mix and wishes them luck. They may do well. They may go to UNO or Holy Cross or Phoenix instead. Whatever. Some of our most promising and carefully structured programs – like LIM or nursing – may or may not survive the transition.

Many already believe that Loyola is terminating its adult programs. Correcting that misinformation will be no mean feat, since our enrollments have depended on the strong reputation we have earned in this city and in our international extension programs.

The loss of City College cuts to the very heart of Loyola and its dedication to the spirit of Ignatius: to meet people where they are. If we are to be restructured, so be it. But if this transformation is to be successful, then we must have more time to work out the details and minimize the damage. Indeed, if this train isn’t at least slowed down, a lot more of our valuable cargo – students, faculty, staff, charisma – will be lost before we ever even manage to switch the tracks.

Barbara C. EwellDorothy Harrell Brown Professor of EnglishCity College

Editor:

I had an appointment to speak with my advisor on Monday, April 10. We were to discuss what classes I need for the summer term. I knew the education department would not be offering a wide variety of classes this summer; we are a small department that emphasizes high quality instruction rather than a high quantity of courses.

However, I was not prepared for the news Dr. Chauvin delivered. I no longer had a department. I was told the president and the powers that be have eliminated the education department at Loyola University. Dr Chauvin stated, “I think that there were numerous creative ways that the education department could have been restructured. We were never asked.”

No one in the education department was asked how this decision could have been avoided.

How can that be? How can a university that is dedicated to the Jesuit traditions of charity and justice education simply dissolve such an important program? I realize that the financial implications caused by Hurricane Katrina was/is the sole determinant in closing the department. I do not know how Loyola justifies their decision.

This university is one of the only institutions in the New Orleans area that has an education department. The ripple effect of closing our department will be felt throughout New Orleans for decades. My professors and my classmates have a profound and rich relationship with the area schools. We opened a science lab at Banneker Middle School. We teach all over the city. We are dedicated to the educational advancement of our inner city children. We have endured hours of lesson planning to ensure we are meeting the needs of our local schools. We have established a reputation in the area schools that demonstrates our continued support of the community.

Amazingly, with the stroke of one pen our community involvement will cease to exist. Did the administration seriously contemplate the devastation their decision will have on our public school system?Loyola University is a member of the New Orleans community. The university stated, prior to re-opening its doors in January, that it is dedicated to the rebuilding of our great city. Without an education department this will not happen. Our city will not flourish. How can we rebuild our city when there are no teachers? It is not jobs that liberate people from poverty. It is education. Without the education department, our city will perish. Loyola will no longer attract out-of-state students that wish to become teachers. Our school system will face a shortage of teachers. Therefore, more public schools will close. Our city will not be able to rebound. The residual effects of closing such an important department will not only be felt by my peers, but by the community. Not only is the city going to lose highly qualified, immensely dedicated and vastly creative teachers but Loyola will lose some of its best professors. It is a shame that this decision was made.

Kristin Cundiffsecond-year Masters of science and elementary education

Editor:

In response to the concerns about retention rate, I find it laughable that the administration even dares to comment. Publicly, the university voices its concerns over dropping retention, but in essence it is driving its own students away.

The administration has not made it possible for some students to return at all.

My family, like most, fled from Katrina and was safe from much of the death and destruction. Loyola refused to allow me to continue the spring semester in Dallas. I was given two options: If I stayed here, my credits from the spring would not transfer. In short, my parents would be wasting approximately the same tuition as Loyola. The alternative was that, for the credits to count, I had to reapply as a transfer student.

With Loyola already in serious financial constraints, I’m willing to wager I could kiss my scholarship goodbye.

With so much anxiety and debate and open hostility from those seeking to further their own political agendas, New Orleans’ easygoing climate is destroyed. With much of its population scattered, it is a mere shadow of its former self. Starting school three weeks behind (particularly with physics, math and organic) was not pleasant. But like so many, I survived. I was looking forward to returning to my home for Spring II.

I understand the concern that some might get settled in, get too comfortable and not return. I see that the thought behind this policy had some merit. In some sense it was meant to help the retention rate. However, given some student’s circumstances, the shortage on housing and the fact that some cannot afford to live on-campus to begin with, it is having a contrary effect.

Loyola’s administration is driving away students who would gladly love to return. This policy only increases the confusion and hurt already felt by so many.

I am asking the administration, is one semester of tuition worth the three or more years I would be enrolled here – that’s three more years of tuition – worth it? I find it disheartening

that a university 500 miles away has been more accommodating than Loyola.

Samantha Behrentchemistry

Editor:

I am very sad to hear about everything that is happening at Loyola. I am thankful everyday for my education from Loyola because I know that it made me the teacher that I am today. The dissolution of the education department would be such an injustice to this city. Aside from the fact that Tulane does not have an Education Department, and thus eliminates any education program from the Uptown area, losing Loyola’s Education Department means losing some of the city’s best education professors.

When I think of the professors I was lucky to study under in the Education

Department for numerous courses, I think of people that have become my closest confidants and advisers. I still speak to most of you on a regular basis asking for advice or just saying hello. The thought that other Loyola students will not be so lucky to develop that relationship with all of you saddens my soul.

So, I am writing to you not only to share my sadness, but also to let you know that I will do anything I can to help the Education Department. I speak for all of the other Loyola education graduates that teach at Newman as well. Everyone here at Newman wants to do whatever we can to discourage this change.

If there is anything further I (we) can do, please let me know.

Jenifer CarlinA’03, G’05

Editor:

However well-intentioned, Loyola’s proposed radical changes are ill-timed and badly thought through.

Discontinuing the education programs (primary and secondary), large parts of the nationally-recognized Communications

Department and the evening degree program hardly seem geared to Loyola’s new goals of aiding post-Katrina New Orleans and its commitment to social justice.

As strange as it may seem, Loyola, with its $325 million endowment, its newly announced $200 million Development

Campaign, its faculty’s eagerness to personally contact alumni it has taught over the last 35+ years to seek financial support, its 92 percent student return rate this year (when it anticipated 70 percent), makes it one of New Orleans’ few institutions without a major financial crisis.

Should Loyola do a complete program review? Of course, but on the usual one-year timeframe: after this year’s hurricane season and when we know actual fall freshmen enrollments.

Announcing major changes now only drives away confused freshmen applicants and current students afraid they won’t be able to complete their majors.

Loyola should immediately announce it is putting proposed changes on hold and have the ideas put into the pot of possibilities for next year’s review process.

Loyola wouldn’t be the only New Orleans institution to rethink and alter proposed changes. Show me an institution, public or private, in New Orleans that hasn’t.

Putting changes on hold, and rethinking them, would be a sign of strength, not weakness. It would make Loyola what it really is: a place that learns and teaches learning.

Vernon GregsonProfessor, Religious Studies