Student union at West Virginia University believes the battle against program cuts is far from done.
When Christian Adams started at West Virginia University as a sophomore, he knew he would be studying Chinese and that his goal was to work in immigration or labor law.
He had no idea that he would alter his major to politics when the state’s premier institution in West Virginia eliminated its international language department and numerous other programs in English, math, and music in September due to a $45 million budget deficit.
And he most definitely didn’t anticipate learning about community organizing from other students or teaching it to them.
However, the American Federation of Teachers criticized the cuts as “draconian and catastrophic,” which in turn sparked a different style of education. Adams is a co-founder of the West Virginia United Students’ Union. The union, which was the main force opposing the cuts, coordinated protests, distributed petitions, and assisted in the preservation of a few teaching posts before the final cuts affected 143 faculty members and 28 majors.
They claim that their work is far from done, disappointed. A new age of student involvement in university politics is what the group’s members, many of whom are first-generation college students and those receiving financial aid in the state with the fewest college graduates, claim to be aiming for.
According to Adams, “what it really represents for WVU is a new era of student politics.”
The movement is a part of a larger wave of student activism at American colleges and universities that is focused on issues such as workplace safety concerns, access to a varied range of course offerings, representation, and affordability of higher education.
The COVID-19 epidemic, declining enrolment, and mounting debt from major construction projects had put the institution in Morgantown under financial strain. Similar decisions have been made by other American universities and colleges, but WVU’s is one of the most extreme instances of a flagship university making such drastic cuts, especially to foreign languages.
The union described the decision to fire 5% of faculty members and 8% of majors as an example of the university administration’s inability to fulfill its land-grant status, which has since the 1800s been responsible for educating rural students who have traditionally been denied access to higher education. In West Virginia, 25% of students are impoverished, and a large number of public K–12 schools lack comprehensive language programs at a time when proficiency in other languages is becoming more and more valuable in the global labor market.
The union intends to closely monitor the school’s budget as it continues to assess its financial situation, organize against any further proposed cuts, and draft backup plans to preserve teacher employment and the program.
Following university head E. Gordon Gee’s retirement next year, keeping an eye on and exerting influence on the school’s search for a new president is also a major objective. The curriculum cuts occurred last year during a period of upheaval in higher education, according to Gee, who was the target of symbolic motions from a faculty group that expressed no confidence in his leadership. Gee further stated that WVU was “leading that change rather than being its victim.”
He warned that if changes are not made, higher education will have “a very bleak future” and that it has grown “arrogant” and “isolated” across the country.
Senior math major and president of the Union Assembly of Delegates Matthew Kolb said his organization does not want a new president who thinks that operating the school as a corporate or business entity is the only way to obtain
He remarked, “We know that when the chips are down, 143 faculty members get pushed off a cliff with one vote.”
Adams, a native of north central West Virginia and the first person in his family to enroll in college right out of high school, said he could move to another university and pursue his Chinese studies there. He did, however, choose WVU in large part due to his devotion to the state and his goal of enhancing its socioeconomic future.
Adams stated, “Not many people choose to stay here—a lot of West Virginians feel trapped in West Virginia and feel like they have to leave.” “I consciously chose to attend WVU and remain here in order to contribute to improving
“Despite basically being told by my state’s flagship university that, ‘Your major is irrelevant, it doesn’t matter, it’s not worth our time or money to teach,'” the cuts required reiterating that promise.
Globally, student union groups have been around for hundreds of years. Often connected in the United States to student hubs that provide access to dining halls, club offices, and social activities, the union also functions as a university-independent advocacy arm in the United Kingdom, advocating at the institutional and national levels.
Members say they want to see the West Virginia United Students’ Union expand and that they see it as an idea like to those in the United Kingdom.
This has required a great deal of work behind the scenes in terms of developing plans to maintain students’ interest and engagement as well as cultivating connections with student government, the university campus workers union, and other groups.
Student Felicia Carrara stated that working with the union kept students’ spirits high while they witnessed staff members frantically searching for new positions and rewriting curricula.
Carrara, a North Carolina native who double majors in Russian and international studies, claimed that West Virginia University was an affordable option for her and many of her colleagues.
The reality that we would now need to change course in order to attempt and acquire scholarships and other funding so that we could afford to attend an institution somewhere else, or else we would either not receive a degree at all or a degree that is essentially worthless. It’s really incredibly depressing,” she remarked.
“You expect things to be better than they were in middle and high school when you go to higher education,” the speaker stated. “And learning that they’re not makes me very sad.”
Andrew Ross, a double major in political science and German who is a senior, will be the last graduate to do so.
Ross, a 31-year-old nontraditional student who transferred to WVU in 2022 after receiving an associate’s degree, found out about the proposed reduction a few days after he got back from a departmental scholarship-supported summer program in Germany.
The cuts, according to Ross, who is currently vice president of the student union’s assembly of delegates, “felt like getting slapped in the face.” He was told to drop his German major by the institution. Despite several detours, he’s proud of his attempt to complete the degree, but it’s bittersweet.
