ALT Statement of the Executive Committee of the Rutgers New Brunswick English Department in response to Writing Program cuts: “Earlier this Spring, Rutgers School of Arts and Sciences Executive Dean Juli Wade announced plans to terminate 29 out of 31 Lecturers teaching in the Department’s Writing Program, to drastically cut the number of classes offered by the Program, and to raise class caps across SAS...”

ALT “The English department’s leadership body, the Executive Committee, deplores this proposal, which disrespects the contributions of our Lecturer colleagues, many of whom have taught in our department for years, and which damages the quality of undergraduate education across New Brunswick: not only will it degrade the fundamental College Writing course—which, at 24 students per section, would have the highest student-teacher ratio for first-year writing in the Big 10—it will also remove successful and irreplaceable 200-level offerings in the Core Curriculum.”

ALT “These plans belong to a troubling pattern at Rutgers of upper-level administrators marginalizing faculty decision-making bodies, ignoring departmental expertise, and vitiating the principles of shared governance. As the formal leadership of the English department, we, the Executive Committee, express our solidarity with our full- and part-time faculty colleagues, and we call upon Dean Wade to reinstate all Lecturers, restore current class caps, commit to fair and sustainable working conditions for all Writing Program faculty, and honor faculty authority over curriculum planning, reversing the Writing Program course cuts.”