Cold Drank

The following is a letter sent to two senior members of the faculty a few months ago. It’s a response to some things said out loud in a faculty meeting about growth, cuts, excellence and diversity. I’m sure comments like the ones made in our faculty meeting and letters like this one are being written all across the country. In the first part of this essay, I said that “big mouth black folks seem to be fired quicker than others.” This letter is quintessentially big mouthed, black and fire-ish.

A few paragraphs later in that first part of the essay, I wrote that my Grandma said, “Don’t never be no one’s charity. I’d rather stay in my burnt up house that I worked to burn up than a house somebody give me an’ day of the week. That first house is mines … (the second one) is mines too, they’ll tell me, until they think it’s time to pay up. That means it was never mines in the first place. And I can’t work it in like I want to.”

Now I understand the following letter was my reckoning with the choice that Grandma made me understand. Even more important than that, it was my working the house that was given to me “like I want to.” 

Ether.

Dear Professor —–  and Professor —–, how are you? I’m writing in response to some of your comments on equity and the English department at our last faculty meeting. Both of you were busy talking to other people immediately after the meeting which actually gave me time to get my thoughts together.

I’m interested in your understandings of equity. Both of your arguments seemed to be predicated on an understanding that our English Department has benefitted from institutional inequity, especially in the area of faculty growth. Smidgens of your argument were echoed by different people in our faculty meeting who seemed to also critique the “growth” of the English department in the last few years.

As an institution, how do we critique the English department for its “growth” (most of which has been excellent faculty of color) without critiquing those colored bodies who actually comprise the growth? Is it possible? Some of us newer members of the English department, as bodies of color and faculty members trying to bring quality to our institution and department felt implicitly critiqued by the cryptic, clunky, demeaning, yet wholly “civil” comments made by senior faculty.

Again, I’d like to ask you both to reconsider not only equity, but quality and tradition.

The recent hires in English haven’t simply ballooned and colored our numbers; we’ve also brought an incredible amount of quality to the institution, the programs and our institution. Absent from the discussion of the ballooning faculty in English last week was any crumb of quality. In and of itself, that kind of commentary is short-sighted. But when we think about how that balloon is a quite colorful balloon, “shortsighted” intent can morph into potent fuel for the hawking of colorless Vassar tradition.

The recent hires of color are the result of excellence on the part of the individual hires and an institutional reckoning on the part of the college. The English department, as a part of the institution, has done some departmental reckoning of who are, where we are and who we want to be. It’s been painful and we, no doubt, need to do a lot more. But I’d like both of you to know that those hires who you claim have “ballooned” and/or “overpopulated” the English department and Vassar College are The English department and Vassar College. We are at the center of the English department bringing quality to our classes, our publishing and our service.

We are at the center of the college, just like you. And as centered folks aspiring to quality, excellence and transformation in this trying time, I want you to know that both of your comments implicitly neglected what we bring to Vassar, our home. Your comments, at best, reduce us to numbers and something called diversity. At worst, your comments conflated us, ironically, to the evidence of inequity. We are colleagues, not evidence.

Last thing …

Though spin would have many believe we in the English department want special treatment and hope that the cuts that need to happen will happen elsewhere, I want you to know that a number of us think English should bare a larger hit than other departments because of our size. We have also, since day one, pleaded with people to make quality cuts, not quantity or opportunity cuts.

I believe that faculty across ranks who aren’t bringing quality should be partially cut. Of course, this is naieve and short-sighted, but that’s one of the perks of being a young untenured faculty member who is indirectly to blame for the ballooning faculty in English, right?

Many of us see the work of the two people in our department as being excellent and would hope that excellence, no matter the rank, is never punished. Some of us have offered to take percentage cuts to keep excellent professors in our department and we would make the same offer to save excellent professors in any department. But none of us, the multicolored evidence of inequity that we are, want English to bare less of a brunt than anyone else. We want fairness, equality and continued excellence from ourselves and our colleagues. We see a lot of that excellence in the de facto Creative Writing Program.

We’re working on exorcising the demons of the English department and owning up to our individual and departmental shortcomings, but I’d also hope everyone in the college is owning the implicit and explicit trajectory of the comments they make in faculty meetings and the potential damage those comments are doing to OUR institution.

I’ll holla,

Ether.

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