UM strikes English MA, overriding faculty vote

by Arren Kimbel-Sannit

State higher education officials have agreed with the University of Montana’s recommendation to shut down its master’s program in English literature, according to the university. 

The decision contradicts the recommendation of the Faculty Senate — which voted in April to retain the program — and comes despite advocacy from graduate students across the university against the cuts. 

Current students will be allowed to finish their degrees. Prospective students who already received offers will see those rescinded. No jobs will be lost as a result of the termination, according to the university. 

UM said it was considering cuts to the program in January in order “to ensure our academic programs are aligned with changing student demand,” spokesperson Dave Kuntz told the Missoulian at the time. 

“To achieve that, and be the best stewards of taxpayer and tuition dollars, we will sunset a small number of our academic offerings that have seen enrollment decline while launching new high-demand programs,” he was quoted as saying.

In addition to the master’s program in English, the university has also recommended cutting its master’s in economics and placing a moratorium on minors in Irish and Chinese studies. 

The Faculty Senate’s vote against the cuts came as students were lobbying the administration on the same front, arguing that the English MA does more than train students in the arts of literary theory — it also provides a teaching workforce for undergraduate writing classes and contributes to the campus’ research output.

“While the university has committed to fulfilling its statutory obligation to ‘teach out’ current MA in Literature students, the impacts felt in the Creative Writing program, the undergraduate writing curriculum, the research production on campus, and the university culture as a whole are already being felt,” students in the program wrote in a newsletter post this week. “Now that the administration has made clear it has no respect for shared governance, we are deeply concerned that they will be emboldened to cut again without transparency or consultation.”

Students even asked incoming university president Jeremiah Shinn about program cuts during his campus visit earlier this spring. While he acknowledged the university’s historic strength in the liberal arts, he said that the university is facing heightened pressure to provide a curriculum that is “workforce-aligned.”

“When I talk about being workforce aligned, I mean that there can’t be a lot of distance between what we’re providing to our students and what they’re going to need when they leave here,” he said during a public forum on campus.

But the efforts of students and faculty were apparently for naught. 

“We recognize that this is a significant decision with real impact on your faculty mentors,” reads an April 16 letter from Vice Provost John DeBoer to affected students. “We want to acknowledge the care and engagement they have brought throughout this process. We also thank you, the students of the MA Literature Program, for your thoughtful engagement and advocacy on behalf of the program.”

It’s not the first time the university has faced cuts to its liberal arts programs. Shortly after becoming president in 2018, Seth Bodnar recommended the elimination of 50 faculty positions in English and language studies over a three-year period. He also combined separate master’s degrees in English literature and English education into one program — a program that has now been eliminated. The university is retaining its Master of Fine Arts in creative writing program.

The Pulp sues for police records

The Pulp and the Invisible Institute, a nonprofit newsroom that reports on police accountability, are suing Montana’s police standards body for the release of data related to officers who have committed misconduct at multiple departments. 

The outlets allege in a March complaint that the Montana Public Safety Officer Standards and Training Council, or POST, under the auspices of the state Department of Justice, is unconstitutionally blocking public access to the names, badge numbers and other identifying records of officers in its files. 

“Law enforcement officers occupy positions of extraordinary public trust,” the lawsuit says.  “They are empowered by the State to stop, detain, search, arrest, and use force — including deadly force — on the public’s behalf, often in circumstances where citizens have little ability to observe, challenge, or later reconstruct what happened. Transparency about who may exercise that authority is therefore critical.”

The state POST council once provided public access to police employment data, the lawsuit says, making Montana one of two dozen states with that level of transparency. But the complaint alleges that this policy changed some time after 2019, when the state Legislature reorganized POST under the state Department of Justice, helmed by Republican firebrand Austin Knudsen since early 2021. Requests from the media and other public interest groups were being routed through DOJ staff who resisted releasing any identifying information about the officers in its files, the lawsuit says. 

“It is reasonable for law enforcement officers to expect privacy until there is evidence they have violated” the public trust, Knudsen wrote to a POST bureau chief regarding a records request from the Associated Press in 2022, as The Pulp previously reported. 

This apparent policy change violates the state constitution’s right-to-know provision, under which the officers should be treated as any other public employee, the lawsuit argues. 

“The public has a right to know who is authorized to use force on its behalf,” Matthew Frank, publisher and co-founder of The Pulp, said in a statement. “This lawsuit is about restoring a transparency standard that POST itself long upheld.”

Last October, The Pulp and the Invisible Institute requested the names and other identifying information of all individuals who had been certified under POST. In its response, the state redacted the names of the officers, ostensibly to protect their privacy. 

But the lawsuit says that the officers, as public employees, do not have a reasonable expectation that their names and departments would be shielded from public view under the law. 

“Time and again the Montana Supreme Court has emphasized that law enforcement officers in Montana occupy a position of public trust, and because of that, information about them should be public,” attorney and former Democratic state lawmaker Rob Farris-Olsen, who is representing the plaintiffs, said in a statement. “POST’s change in policy is contrary to Montana’s fundamental constitutional right to know, and decades of case law interpreting that right.”

POST and the attorney general’s office have yet to respond in court. The case is filed in Lewis and Clark County District Court before Judge Christopher Abbott.

The ledger #️⃣

57

Difference in degrees between the record-tying high of 82 on Tuesday in Missoula and a potentially record-setting low of 25 early Saturday morning, as forecast by the National Weather Service.

The week ahead 🗓️

• On Tuesday, April 28, at 4:30 p.m. at the Florence Building downtown, the city is hosting an open house to discuss proposed changes to the city’s downtown infrastructure as part of the $24 million Downtown Safety, Access, and Mobility Project, SAM. Under the plan, designed to improve safety and multi-modal connectivity downtown, Front and Main streets will be converted to two-way streets and Higgins will be put on a road diet with improvements for bike and bus access, among other changes.

Find a list of all upcoming city meetings here and county meetings here.

The feed 🗞️