Today at noon Irene McAra McWilliam came to the studio to announce the decision made at yesterday's Academic Council meeting, joined by Archie McAll and Colin McKean (SRC president).
The recommendation has been accepted, with immediate implementation. This was the first point.
The second point (according to my hastily scribbled notes) was that Irene would be responsible for ensuring that adequate support would be in place for all of the current cohort of students. This would include keeping the workshop the same as it is today, (with the same access both for ceramics students and students from other departments), adequate staff, the same assessment procedure, and also to keep the SSR -staff/student ratio- the same (does this mean that the current first year will have 1/4 full-time tutor, 1/4 part-time tutor, and 1/4 technician???)
The third point, incredibly, underlined that "the decision had gone through correct procedure".
The fourth and final point was about the Future - it is now up to the Ceramics department's staff and students, in dialog with Irene and Archie, to come up with a viable future for Ceramics within the School. (This future cannot, apparently, ever include a specialist undergraduate course).
I do not believe that this decision was taken lightly. The amount of people that have been upset and raised objections, on all levels, cannot have been ignored. I must therefore conclude that there is something bigger here that we have not been told about.
It's a sad day for Ceramics, for Ceramists. We are being told we are obsolete.
It is up to us to show that this is not the case.
The recommendation has been accepted, with immediate implementation. This was the first point.
The second point (according to my hastily scribbled notes) was that Irene would be responsible for ensuring that adequate support would be in place for all of the current cohort of students. This would include keeping the workshop the same as it is today, (with the same access both for ceramics students and students from other departments), adequate staff, the same assessment procedure, and also to keep the SSR -staff/student ratio- the same (does this mean that the current first year will have 1/4 full-time tutor, 1/4 part-time tutor, and 1/4 technician???)
The third point, incredibly, underlined that "the decision had gone through correct procedure".
The fourth and final point was about the Future - it is now up to the Ceramics department's staff and students, in dialog with Irene and Archie, to come up with a viable future for Ceramics within the School. (This future cannot, apparently, ever include a specialist undergraduate course).
I do not believe that this decision was taken lightly. The amount of people that have been upset and raised objections, on all levels, cannot have been ignored. I must therefore conclude that there is something bigger here that we have not been told about.
It's a sad day for Ceramics, for Ceramists. We are being told we are obsolete.
It is up to us to show that this is not the case.
1 comment:
Hi Ester, brilliant site/blog. Just a suggestion, can you add the links to this blog and to the petition so when I send your posting as an email, the recipient can, with any luck, go straight to petition to sign and maybe check out the blog too.
v best
Claudia
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