And we're fresh out of magic beans

It may not have been the most depressing meeting in the history of academic department meetings, but it has to be right up toward the top of the list. My department sat in our regular meeting space alongside our colleagues who last week were informed that their positions are being discontinued, and what can we say to them? Sorry is hardly adequate. The wounds are still raw and there isn't a band-aid big enough to help.

We had two essential pieces of business to perform. First, we had to revamp next year's course schedules to take into account the impending absence of key colleagues, a discussion that raised questions such as these: Will promised budget cuts prevent us from hiring adjuncts to cover some sections of first-year composition? Will we be pressured to raise the seat numbers in composition classes? Will we be able to offer enough upper-level writing classes to enable students pursuing writing minors to complete those programs? Will we have to cut down on the number of core General Education classes we offer? Who will take over the administrative tasks performed by the colleagues whose positions have been cut? Few answers were forthcoming.

The second order of business required us to respond to a survey that will be submitted to the committee charged with making recommendations about cutting majors and programs, and this activity raised a whole different set of questions, some of them more cheerful, like How have we managed to get so many of our majors into so many great graduate programs? We talked about our former students who are teaching and writing and doing good work and we want to know how we can keep on doing the things that are equipping students for interesting careers, but the more time we have to spend defending our right to exist, the less time we can devote to doing our actual jobs.

We look at our record of service to the College and community, at the great work our graduates are doing and the impact they'll keep having long into the future, and we know we've managed over the years to do a whole lot of academic magic despite limited resources. We're committed to continuing to do this good work, but deep inside we wonder: how can we keep making the magic happen when so many wands have been snapped in two?