open letter. or, i'm not so much angry as disappointed

Let me get this straight:

Say, just hypothetically, that you're a grad student at a small progressive institution in, oh, say, southern Vermont focusing on international education and development. Your graduate school is part of a larger organization encompassing a high school summer abroad program, college semester study abroad programs, and an international development programs office. (Though, to be fair, it probably seems to grad students sometimes like the grad school is really what the organization is about, intense-experience-on-an-insular-campus as it is.)

The organization as a whole has had its ups and downs over the years and is finally taking a step back to try to really ensure its long-term fiscal stability, so it takes a hard look at budgets around the organization and makes some tough choices. Some of those choices involve cutting back the grad programs and eliminating several faculty positions.

Undoubtedly (at least to me), it wasn't easy for those in power here to reach the conclusion that several of their peers should lose their jobs. This is, after all, a small campus and the people making the decisions aren't some phantom uncaring omnipotent beings in far-away corner offices. But the reality is that the grad school doesn't make anywhere near the money it needs to sustain itself, and in fact WOULDN'T EXIST AT ALL were it not for the other divisions of the organization (*ahem*... the study abroad programs) making a profit.

(Not to mention the people in those other divisions living relatively peacefully with the fact that any profit they bring in goes to prop up the grad school rather than being reinvested in their own work. Nope. Won't mention that.)

So, like the good activist hippie you are (why else would you be at this particular grad school in the first place?) (and I say that with generally great affection for and identification with the activist hippies of the world), you decide to protest the decision to reduce grad school size and eliminate the faculty positions. You get together with fellow angry folk and decide to put up hand-painted banners all over campus with angry slogans aimed at disparaging not only the decision but the people and process that resulted in the decision. In order to really make your point, you decide to put up a whole lot of these banners during the week of a grad school open house during which current and potential applicants visit campus as they consider attending school here.

OK... all of that is pretty clear. And I'm sure that the angry activism comes from a place of care and concern about the future of the program and the people who have taught and mentored students through that program over the years. I really do think that speaks well of the program as well as the passion and energy of the people it attracts.

The part I'm having trouble with is where you think it's logical to protest the cutting of underenrolled grad programs by pointedly criticizing the institution to potential future grad students.

Where I'm from they call that shooting yourself in the foot. With a fairly large gun.

And frankly, given that you are attending a graduate institution whose curriculum is based on intercultural understanding and productive dialogue, your approach to this issue (at least, the really visible part of the approach) seems altogether pretty unimpressive to those of us who work our asses off to keep things functioning in the one part of the organization whose finances aren't regularly in the red.

You're welcome (just hypothetically, of course).