Emily Hirsch is a 2015 graduate of the Columbian College of Arts and Sciences.
I’m writing in response to the article, “With budget cuts, creative writing program loses faculty” by Ellie Smith (p. 1, Oct. 12).
As a recent alumna and as a former English major, I was deeply discouraged but not the least bit surprised to read about the faculty cuts to the University’s creative writing program. If GW wants to continue marketing itself as a liberal arts university, it cannot keep devaluing and ultimately dismantling programs and departments that make up the very core of liberal arts studies.
Last year, I was unsettled by the drastic cuts to the music department, but more out of principle, as I hadn’t taken any music classes. But the cuts to the creative writing program are personal.
The introduction to creative writing class I took my senior year was undoubtedly one of the best classes I had at GW. Yes, I understand that this class isn’t going anywhere. However, crucial elements that contributed to the class’s transformative effect on me and others are being swiftly brushed aside.
Class size matters. The number of class sections matter. The instructor’s level of experience matters.
Because introduction to creative writing fulfills a GPAC requirement, students of varying majors were in my class. It provided an opportunity for an unlikely group of 15 students to think together, write together and most fundamentally, to exercise true creativity together. This is a combination that I found to be a rare privilege at GW.
If it weren’t for that class, I wouldn’t have learned from and eventually befriended an incredible, accomplished poet. I may not have encountered Patricia Lockwood’s “Rape Joke” – a poem that changed how I understand rape and humor, introduced me to a new style of poetry and became the centerpiece for an important paper I would later write in my upper-level English class.
I also certainly would not be writing creatively every day outside my house in rural Zambia while I serve in the Peace Corps. And as an English teacher, I wouldn’t find it as urgent to encourage my Zambian students to express their thoughts through creative writing.
Though there is no easy connection between creative writing and future jobs, a concept that can be hard to navigate at a career-focused school like GW, creative writing classes are valuable. Not only do they alter the way we write, the way we think and the way we read, but they have the capacity to shape the kind of people we are in this world.
I find it hypocritical that the University celebrates and promotes the acquisition of the Corcoran College of Arts + Design but abandons its own arts programs. Classes like introduction to creative writing kept me at GW, and hasty budget decisions like this make me increasingly wary to give money to the University going forward.
GW either needs to accept that it is a corporate university, or decide to redirect its focus to sustaining the arts with a real, genuine effort that follows through on the promise to offer GW students an adequate liberal arts education.
