SARS dept. saved from ax, will hire new faculty

After months of hanging on the brink of elimination, the fate of the South Asia Regional Studies Department was finally settled with yesterday's announcement that it will remain an independent department, with some changes in structure and the potential for a new name.

Over the past two years, the future of SARS -- a department established in 1947 as the first department of its kind in the nation -- has been in a state of limbo. The need for the department was questioned in 2000, since it had not made a full-time faculty appointment in 25 years and the number of standing faculty had shrunk to under half of the original number.

And in the fall of 2000, the U.S. Department of Education denied the SARS department Title VI funding for the first time in the Penn program's existence.

School of Arts and Sciences Dean Samuel Preston announced the decision to keep the department independent in a letter sent to the associate deans who sat on the committee that helped decide whether they should refocus SARS or merge it with the Asian and Middle Eastern Studies Department.

"We recognize that there are intellectual and institutional reasons for maintaining the study of South Asian culture within AMES," the letter read. "However, it is clear that the faculty who are specialists in South Asia studies think otherwise.

"We accept your advice and will aim at concentrating faculty strength in South Asian language, literature and culture through appointments in a reformulated SARS with a mission that is oriented more pointedly toward humanistic research and teaching (a departmental name change is probably in order)," the letter continued.

The decision to maintain SARS as a separate department came after months of deliberation which took into consideration feedback from faculty in various departments who specialize in South Asian studies.

Many people objected to AMES absorbing SARS on the grounds that South Asia spans a large geographic area which encompasses numerous diverse cultures. United Minorities Council political chairman Shaun Gonzales said "throwing SARS into AMES" would have been "disrespectful to those cultures."

But throughout the controversy, Undergraduate SARS Department Chairwoman Rosane Rocher said she remained confident that the program would survive.

"I don't think that internally we ever felt in limbo," Rocher said. "The department was always very strongly committed about what we wanted to do, but there were outside circumstances that made our lives insecure."

Rocher added that the refocused department will "be much more clearly targeted for languages and cultures of South Asia so we can focus on our mission."

Gonzales said that he's most excited about the decision to rethink the way SARS functions now.

"The idea of refocusing the department on the humanistic and cultural aspects of the study is indicative of the commitment the deans have towards strengthening South Asian Studies," he said.

Preston has said repeatedly that the faculty and the courses associated with SARS is more important than the administrative structure of the department. One of his current concerns, however, is the size of the department.

"It's going to be a small department, and small departments are vulnerable in ways that large departments are not," Preston said last night. "Instead of the protection that a large department would have provided, that AMES would have provided, it's going to be on its own. So the faculty will have to devote the time and the energy to providing the leadership that will be required."

The redefined SARS department will gain the currently-open faculty position in Sanskrit, an addition that pleases Gonzales.

"It means that there's going to be more faculty in the SARS department," Gonzales said. "I'm delighted that they've decided to keep SARS under this structured department. The next step is just to see to it that the faculty members are strengthened."

Last year, Preston announced that SARS would remain in its current form after months of speculation that it would be eliminated. However, problems with the department's structure persisted, leading the University to search for a more effective and permanent solution.

"This was a process that was effective, in that we met with faculty and then asked them for their views for where SARS language and culture should be," Preston said last night. "The suggestions were pretty nearly unanimous that they felt the SARS format was a better way to proceed. I do not have compelling reasons to oppose that point of view."

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