Members of the Binghamton University English department are up in arms at the recent class size and teaching assistant switch-up.

The department has been forced to reduce class sizes and eliminate almost 1,000 seats from some key classes. As English TAs take on WRIT 111, which isn’t required, hundreds of undergrads are getting closed out of required courses such as Shakespeare and British Literature I and II.

According to an English professor who wished to remain anonymous because the professor feared for his or her job security, the English department did not want to do this; rather, BU’s administration told them to do so.

“Nobody wants this, but the WRIT [writing] program and the administration,” said a Ph.D. student in the department who also spoke on the condition of anonymity.

English majors and doctoral students say the message from the administration is clear: they don’t matter anymore.

“You might as well say ‘we don’t care about our Ph.D. students,’” the student said. “Word will spread and no one will apply here — we’ll just get mediocre students.”

English courses that used to be offered, like ENG 112-113 and ENG 117-118, are no longer being offered for the upcoming semester. Yet, those English courses were content-specific courses that allowed the Ph.D. students to teach a topic that they were specializing in.

“It really sucks because the tradition of the English department is that by the time you were a Ph.D. student, you were teaching your own courses,” the student said. “At the pinnacle of your Ph.D. time, you now have to teach something that’s not what you came to teach, what you came to professionalize in. That’s a travesty.”

Another English professor who wished to remain anonymous added that “lack of seating in popular courses as well as a lack of potential credit hours lost to students trying to graduate makes no sense when trying to serve the student population.”

Gayle Whittier, an associate English professor and teacher of Shakespeare, is wary of the University’s priorities in this situation.

“What does the University value and how does that impact students’ access to both electives and requirements?” she asked.