English major's committee has little influence

Aliya Barnwell Guest Writer

Vassar’s English Department has a positive reputation. Most of the professors are accessible, the office is well organized, and help is provided to those in need of class and office schedules.

Why is it, then, that majors often have so many complaints? Could it be that they were not prepared to write elite theses on transgressive aestheticism? Is it the feeling of being “in wand’ring mazes lost” because they do not receive grades on their work? Perhaps the faculty and majors are simply not as connected as they would like to be.

The little-known majors’ committee has suffered due to this gap between majors and professors. At this point, it is comprised of five students, with a budget of less than two hundred dollars a year, and is expected to facilitate relations between the department and the majors. They are responsible for drawing new majors into the fold, as well as creating and advertising events like the bi-yearly graduate school forum and the annual Milton reading.

How many of you readers have heard of the yearly reading of Paradise Lost? You know, that event with no beer that takes place in the Chapel? The turnout was small last year, though this may have more to do with Vassar students’ tendency to be easily swayed by food bribes. The spread at the reading consisted of gummy worms—representing Lucifer as the snake—and Fig Newtons. Both were appetizingly fresh from their respective plastic containers. English majors were not the only faces noticeably absent from the event, but many faculty members who have an interest in that area of literature also avoided the hard seats and cheap food.

A more painful debacle was that of the yearly dessert, which suffered a frighteningly low attendance in part because it was scheduled for the same evening as Eamon Grennan’s retirement dinner. This was due simply to a lack of communication between the committee and the department. It is possible to blame both for their independently inconsiderate actions.

Jeanette Vaught ‘05, co-chair of the majors’ committee, noted what is positive about the English department: “The professors love their students.” And in a recent collaborative meeting, the department chairs expressed their interest in revitalizing the relationship between the faculty, the committee, and the majors at large.

The committee is seeking new students, since the five current members are seniors, and will be forced to leave their responsibilities to the next generation. They plan to have slots for members of each class, and a second semester position for an undeclared freshman. However, the seniors expect more than “warm bodies” to fill committee seats; they claim they only want people who will contribute. The natural question is: what are they contributing to if so little is getting done?

This is a good start on the long and bumpy road away from event snacks containing gelatin, but without proper advertising—more than just the quickly deleted campus wide email—the committee might be dooming some unlucky, if devoted, junior or sophomore to take up where they left off. Majors can also hope that the faculty—not just the chairs, who have enough on their plates with the sheer numbers of the junior and sophomore classes—will take an interest in the students that are working to make their department the best that it can be.

Though Vaught admitted that there is as much favoritism in the English department as in any other, she did not believe that it was a problem. So what is the problem? Why do most English majors look befuddled when asked about the majors’ committee? With the beginning of a new academic year, the department has a chance to change its image while the committee, still an unknown to many students, has the opportunity to make a name for itself, hopefully drawing in record numbers of freshmen.

Hopefully, the seniors looking to pass the torch will be open to different perspectives and active approaches of improving the English majors’ committee and not allow their hard work to vanish into the obscurity of e-mail trash bins everywhere.