University “Sunsets” and Outrage
Graphic by Emma Novy
Welcome to Syracuse University! Home to the first-ever College of Arts and Sciences, founded in 1871. We take immense pride in our liberal arts core, a tradition tracing back to the education of the Middle Ages. This foundation comprises the trivium—grammar, rhetoric, and logic—and the quadrivium—arithmetic, music, geometry, and astronomy.
Welcome to Syracuse University! Where, despite our supposed devotion to the trivium and quadrivium, and despite assuring you on your campus tour that we are liberal arts pioneers, we are systematically cutting the very programs that make the liberal arts what they are.
The "liberal" in liberal arts comes from the Latin word liber, meaning "free"—unrestricted. To "liberate" the mind from ignorance and prepare a person for the responsibilities of liberty. Clearly, cutting the Classics program has ensured that no one is left to translate that definition for the administrators who champion the liberal arts at dinner parties, only to blatantly abandon the "arts" in Arts and Sciences.
Welcome to Syracuse University! The birthplace of the first Bachelor of Fine Arts program in 1874! But don’t get too excited—the university has decided to "sunset" that pioneering program, too.
Welcome to Syracuse University! We are ranked number ten on U.S. News & World Report’s list of the best study abroad programs in the nation. As an institution that pushes students to go abroad at least once to expand their horizons, we have simultaneously decided to let go of German, Russian, Latino-Latin American Studies, Middle Eastern Studies, and Modern Jewish Studies. Apparently, we don’t actually want our students to understand the world outside of their dorm rooms. And while we’re at it, let’s collapse the French and Italian programs into the Modern Foreign Language track. Why should students want specific language studies? It’s not as if the university has its own centers in those countries. It’s not as if we require students to study those languages to attend those programs. Oh, wait—we do.
Welcome to Syracuse University, where students are given every reason to feel, time and again, that the humanities are not supported despite the liberal arts model we so proudly bear. The euphemistic "sunsetting" of these programs implies they will rise once more; however, we cannot allow this university to believe we are anything less than upset, angry, and deeply disappointed. We cannot allow them to continue spreading the narrative that we are not important—a narrative they probably needed AI to help them write.