University of Illinois-Chicago Classics under threat

[Andrew Reinhard]

I am posting this note that was sent to the Illinois Classics list yesterday on behalf of Dave Johnson, Southern Illinois University, Carbondale:

As many of you closer to Chicagoland than I here in deepest Southern Illinois have no doubt already heard, the Classics program at UIC is under threat:

http://www.suntimes.com/news/education/1329932,CST-NWS-classics14.a...

We all should pitch in to fight this. Anyone aware of a campaign afoot?

The planned degradation of the UIC program would mean that the only state schools offering Greek in the state, to the best of my knowledge, would be Southern Illinois Carbondale and Urbana-Champaign. While we at Carbondale are pleased to find ourselves in such exalted company, this retrenching would further marginalize classics (not to mention set a precedent to cut our program as well, which ought to be even more fragile than that at UIC, since we have only three classicists here).

I won't preach to this choir about the importance of Greek (and the classics in general), and particularly about making them available to a wide range of students, not only those attending elite universities. But this sounds like something we'll need to work to try to prevent.

Dave Johnson
Southern Illinois University Carbondale