Students presented a petition with 1,707 student signatures against cutting language courses at a town hall that administrators held on Friday, April 23. Present were John Scherk, vice-dean of undergraduates, William Gough, vice-dean graduate education, and humanities department chair William Bowen. The signatures, representing 16 per cent of the student population at UTSC, were collected during the last four days of class.

“Language courses have to serve a program. If they don’t serve a program, they don’t have a place in our curriculum,” said Scherk. He said that an external review found that language courses in Sanskrit, Arabic, Japanese, Latin, Spanish and Tamil do not relate “intimately” to any program.

The vice-deans said their office will set up an advisory committee in September to further evaluate language teaching at UTSC and make a decision on whether or not to continue teaching some language courses. The decision could take four months or more.

“We certainly take very seriously the interest students have shown through the petition and emails about language teaching,” Scherk said. Asked how the petition will affect the language teaching discussion within the advisory group, he was unable to answer.

Bowen said Hindi, Mandarin and Spanish will be continue to be offered in the 2010-11 school year. After 2011, Spanish will be “phased out” and undergo the same review as other language courses. Bowen said he was unsure about the future of beginner level French courses. FREA96, 97, 98, and 99 are on the chopping block.

Students have been told that admin are considering offering languages in a tri-campus basis. “Not every quarter of the University of Toronto can or should offer every language,” reads a letter from Rick Halpern, dean and VP academics, who did not attend the meeting.

“My biggest concern is that languages are mandatory in my program and it is difficult to enrol in other campuses [due to space]. It also takes you hours to get to other campuses,” said Calla Paleczny, a second-year studying international development.

A life science student asked admin what value they are placing on languages “in and of themselves” without fitting into other programs. Bowen replied, “Languages [on their own] are not central to the mission of the University of Toronto.”

Several execs of the Scarborough Campus Students’ Union also attended the meeting. Fatih Kurt, VP human resources, said a third party should conduct a review on the language courses.

Richard McKergow, an outreach coordinator of the Association of Part-Time Undergraduates, said part-time students could be more affected by the cuts. “Part-time students may have come to university just to take language courses,” he said.

Wayne Dealy, the secretary-treasurer of the labour union CUPE 3902, said that sessional lecturers were being completely disregarded. Sessionals teach most of the foreign language courses at UTSC.