The past few months have been trying on the University.
Programs have been cut, places around campus have closed, and instructors have been let go — and more bad omens seem to be on the way.
As the semester ends, I have one last request I would like to make: Please, LSU, stop threatening the English instructors’ careers.
As many know, all English instructors were sent a letter of termination in spring 2010, setting their terminations for January 2011.
They received another letter in September deferring their terminations until August 2011.
I had the chance to sit down and talk with English professors and instructors. The mood surrounding the conversations was unnerving.
While most guessed their terminations will be deferred again, the instructors said they aren’t being treated fairly.
The instructors are on year-to-year contracts, so telling them they don’t have a job for next year is simply a huge slap in the face from the University administration.
If you know you’re going to be fired in a month, what’s the incentive to do a good job?
Many of these instructors have master’s and doctorate degrees and have made their careers out of teaching college students basic yet necessary courses in writing.
When I spoke with Renee Major, English instructor and associate director of University Writing, she told some of the instructors were already off looking for jobs elsewhere, where they can find job security.
Even if their terminations are continually delayed, the lack of job security could easily cost the University many of its indispensable instructors.
Assuming the worst — that the University does fire many of these instructors — the students’ education will quickly depreciate.
The craft of writing is one of the most basic forms of education a person receives, yet also one of the most important. If instructors are gone, professors will be left to teach the writing courses. I was told numerous times during interviews that professors are not trained to teach writing courses — they teach upper level classes.
And if professors were forced to teach the lower level writing courses, they would have to neglect one of their main duties — conducting research.
A university that does not conduct research is not a university. We may as well be a community college.
In the end, there’s not much we can do.
If the University continues to delay the English instructors’ terminations, we’re screwed.
If the University fires the English instructors, we’re screwed.
If they let the professors teach the writing classes, we’re still screwed — and we’re a community college.
The administration needs to look elsewhere to make cuts or at least figure out a way to notify instructors that won’t kill morale.
We need the instructors here, or otherwise writing, the most powerful skill the University teaches, will suffer greatly.
As Rudyard Kipling said, “Words are the most powerful drug used by mankind.”
Chris Grillot is a 19-year-old mass communication and English sophomore from New Orleans. Follow him on Twitter @TDR_Cgrillot.
 
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Contact Chris Grillot at [email protected]