Section 1 | Section 2 | Section 3 | Section 4a | Section 4b | Section 4c | Section 4d | Section 4e
| Section 4f | Section 4g | Section 4h | Section 4i | Section 4j | Section 5 | Section 6 | Section 7 | Section 8 |
IV-D. Initial
Report of Graduate Student Representative to Internal Review Committee
Dear
Hal,
Below
you will see my report on the Slavic Review. Sorry to get it to you after so long. It has been an extremely busy quarter
for me and I wasn’t aware that drafts of your report were circulating
until I received my Graduate Council agenda packet yesterday. While you have obviously already
written your report, I thought it would be useful to have mine for your
records.
With
regards to your report, I strongly agree with your conclusions. I have a few comments, however, that I
wanted to offer. I’m not
sure as to how the receivership would work if approved. Some consideration should be given,
however, as to how to protect students when they are most subject to faculty
power abuses: namely in exams, letters of recommendation, job placement
assistance etc. Secondly, there
needs to be some clearer means of facilitating redress for students who have already been the victims of faculty abuse. This would involve the referral of
complaints to appropriate Senate disciplinary bodies for further investigation
and possible action. It also
involves consideration as to what, if anything, can be done to “make
whole” those who have been abused.
I understand that these are difficult issues and that they may well fall
outside of the purview of the review’s mandate. But they are issues that the review report could suggest
that the “receiver” take on as a means of bringing healing to the
department and building student confidence in the new regime. I realize that shutting down admissions
and placing the department in receivership are very significant actions. In order for it to work from the
perspective of the students, however, there needs to be a strong sense that the
changes are not cosmetic and that departmental faculty can really be held
accountable for promoting student welfare and actively helping students to
progress. Accountability involves
both redress of past wrongs and strong safeguards at the points where students
are most vulnerable.
Unfortunately,
I cannot make tomorrow’s meeting as I’ll be out of town. Thus, I won’t be able to make any
of these points in person. But I
hope you will consider them as you revise your draft and/or devise a mandate
for the “receiver.” I
will also see if Luisa can distribute copies of this memo so that the issues
mentioned above might be considered during the Council’s discussion.
I
hope that you find this helpful.
Best,
Mark
--------------------------
To:
Harold
Martinson
Chair,
Slavic Languages and Literatures Review Team
Dear
Hal,
From
the information I have seen, the graduate program in the Slavic Languages and
Literatures Department has significant problems. The comments on the student questionnaires are quite
alarming with their accounts of physical and verbal abuse of students by
faculty members. From the
questionnaires and the accounts of the two students who provided me with
extensive written comments, there are huge problems with student morale. The reasons for the morale problem are
many. The main reasons appear to
be the aforementioned faculty abuse, tolerance of the abuse by other
departmental faculty, the lack of a clear and consistent articulation of
expectations especially with regard to exams, grossly inadequate coordination
between course and exam requirements, hostility toward contemporary theoretical
approaches resulting in an almost complete “blackout” of such
approaches in courses, exams, etc., the separation of linguistics faculty into
rival camps that are extremely hostile to each other and to students working
with members of the rival camp, and funding that is inadequate and awarded
through a process that is far from transparent. Taken together, these problems present a very disturbing
portrait of the department. It is
important to consider the cumulative effect of these conditions as they create
an atmosphere of disempowerment for graduate students where it is difficult for
them to expect that they have any effective recourse if they feel that they are
being treated unfairly.
Indeed,
it is not difficult to understand that students in such a situation might
simply adopt a survival approach of saying nothing and just weathering things
as best they can. I mention this
because both the written and oral student comments showed an extremely high
level of anxiety about the possibility of attribution and faculty
retaliation. Exacerbating this
anxiety was the information students had gotten from Murphy Hall that the
confidentiality of their comments could not be guaranteed. A number of students also expressed
concern about whether comments made to the review team might also get back to
Slavic faculty. A student
suggested to me that many students would not talk to me and purposely avoided
the review visit out of fear that departmental faculty might attribute any
negative comments about the department to them. The student offered this suggestion as a reason for why I
might not hear a lot of information directly from other students that would
echo the comments that student had made.
I certainly did not immediately or unthinkingly accept that
argument. I obviously realized the
problems with automatically interpreting others’ silence as tacit
agreement. After hearing the same
observation from another student, reviewing the survey comments and discussing
the issue extensively with the student who originally made the comment,
however, I find it very plausible that many other students than approached me
directly share the concerns articulated above. Without question, the survey comments echo the concerns
about faculty abuse of students that lay at the heart of the more extensive
individual critiques I heard.
Having
said that, I must note that the students at the large group meeting did not
mention any major problems except for funding and the lack of clear guidelines
for exams. A number of students
said that their concerns were represented in a document that they had
circulated to the review committee.
Not having received a copy, however, I cannot comment on the document or
whether it corroborates or challenges the views mentioned above. In addition, a number of students said
that they wanted to reserve their comments for individual meetings they were
having with the review committee.
Again, I have no idea what the students said in these individual
meetings and what light they shed on the issues mentioned above. The number of students requesting
individual meetings and their reluctance to speak in front of the whole group
seemed atypical of the reviews for which I have served as the student
representative.
Although
I have listed the main problems above, I would like to offer a few particularly
striking examples to illustrate my concerns. It is important, however, to view these as symptoms of the
larger underlying problems of a lack of respect for students and a lack of a
mechanism for holding faculty accountable; the examples themselves are not the
problems and cannot be simply solved by recommending that the faculty no longer
abuse students. Some of the most
notorious examples include a faculty member requiring a student on a class
handout to do five times as many
presentations as any of the other students in a class and on at least two
occasions throwing chairs at students.
In terms of exams, students reported facing grossly disparate exams and
hearing that some faculty feel capable of determining whether or not they are
going to pass or fail a student before she/he has even taken the exam. One student reported being asked questions
in an exam that no one in the field had yet been able to solve. In terms of fostering professional
development, students reported that they were actually discouraged by faculty from publishing or giving conference
papers. Students also report that
they are strongly discouraged from intellectually engaging with developments in
related disciplines. This seems
particularly problematic for linguistics students. According to the students I heard from, they are prevented
from taking even basic linguistics classes as well as being discouraged from
familiarizing themselves with the latest theoretical debates in the field. The result is that many students’
initial progress is slowed considerably and that most students are not even
sufficiently conversant with contemporary linguistics theory to articulate a
position on it. Commenting on the
former point, one student described the situation as “trying to do
quantum mechanics without ever having studied calculus.” The opacity of funding procedures is
certainly a problem and one not unique to Slavic. Even more troubling however were the reports I heard of a
pregnant student being de-funded because it was expected that she would take a
leave of absence and another female student being told that her funding was not
a priority because she was married and it was assumed that her husband could
adequately support her. Reflecting
the other side of this sexist coin, I was told that a male student about to
have a child was informed that his funding would be increased so as to help him
meet his new financial obligations.
While
a certain amount of attrition is inevitable in every graduate program, I heard
from students that attrition in Slavic seemed to them to be particularly
high. I have neither the time nor
the resources to investigate this thoroughly and see how Slavic’s
attrition rate compares to the rest of the university and to other Humanities
departments. That needs to be
examined. I strongly recommend an
analysis of Slavic’s attrition rate and placement rate in comparison to
the rest of UCLA, to other Humanities departments and the Slavic departments at
other universities. Also, as
students reported seeing their colleagues leaving the department because of
faculty harassment, I recommend an analysis of exit interviews of students who
have left Slavic before completing their doctorate. Even more important, however, is the issue of interviewing
these former students now. While
this is unorthodox and is obviously not going to yield a particularly happy
assessment of the department, it has to be looked into. If students are feeling hounded out of
the department, the review team needs to know that and address it.
I
am under no illusion that my information gathering has been as exhaustive or
comprehensive as is necessary to justify the radical reform of the department
that my preliminary information suggests is necessary. I am confident, however, that the
information gleaned from students is more than sufficient to justify a much
more far-reaching investigation of the department than is typical of most
8-year reviews. This would include
an audit of the handling of graduate student support funds. Clearly, there are deeply engrained
problems in the Slavic department that cannot be solved simply through the
recommendations typical of 8-year reviews. In addition to significant curricular reform regarding exam
preparation, the department needs ongoing oversight over the faculty and strong
student protections. The current
Slavic faculty has shown itself to be incapable of providing even the most
basic elements of a supportive and collegial environment and of disciplining
faculty members who abuse students.
The review team should thus consider referring student complaints to
appropriate Senate disciplinary committees for further investigation.
Given this situation, it is not an overstatement
to suggest that the credibility of the Academic Senate and the UCLA
administrative structure is at stake with this review. If the Senate and the administration
are serious about protecting and advancing student welfare and maintaining the
intellectual credibility of the program, neither can allow the situation to
continue as it is. While concerns
about collegiality and faculty members’ academic freedom certainly need
to be considered in this process, the welfare and academic freedom of the
graduate students in the program are obviously no less important. Indeed, one might say that the Senate
has an even greater duty to protect the welfare and academic freedom of the students
because students are in a particularly vulnerable position and the Senate
review process claims the moral and intellectual authority of an unbiased and
thorough evaluation of academic programs.
This situation may raise some thorny questions about accountability in
the university. If the only way to
hold faculty members accountable in such circumstances is to have students file
formal charges, the university and the Senate are not adequately discharging
their responsibility to the students.
In addition, the university and the Senate are missing an opportunity to
resolve problems more expeditiously and perhaps with less legal liability.
As I understand the review process, it is designed
to unearth problems and provide constructive criticism to departments and
programs. It also serves as a means
of providing outside perspective and assistance for any whom might feel the
internal power structure of a department or program prevents them from getting
fair treatment. As such, the
review process serves a crucial role in maintaining the credibility of programs
and the university as a whole.
This review of Slavic Languages and Literatures clearly reveals
significant problems. Further
investigation is needed to determine the full extent of the problems and the
appropriate solutions. In this
regard, the situation in this department may not be entirely amenable to the
normal review process. If more
resources, time, and different procedures need to be drawn upon to fully
appreciate the situation and the possible methods of resolution, however, the Senate
must work vigorously to ensure that happens. Such investigation and ameliorative action needs to occur as
quickly as possible.
Please do not hesitate to call upon me if I can be
of any further assistance in this matter.
Respectfully yours,
Mark Quigley
Graduate Student
Representative
Section 1 | Section 2 | Section 3 | Section 4a | Section 4b | Section 4c | Section 4d | Section 4e
| Section 4f | Section 4g | Section 4h | Section 4i | Section 4j | Section 5 | Section 6 | Section 7 | Section 8 |