Williams College Language Club: Program Statement

We, students and faculty engaged in language-study and language-learning, find it necessary, having created a Mission Statement enumerating the general reasons, needs, grievances and hopes which compelled us to form the WCLC do now find it necessary to set forth the specific historical necessity which compelled Language Club to form. This document is intended as an in-depth elaboration of the situations which produced WCLC.

In the Fall Semester of 2009, it was announced that Nathan Sanders, Professor of Linguistics, had been denied his tenure appeal and would therefore not be returning to his post as Linguistics Professor.[1] Because of the College’s freeze on hiring professors,[2] this effectively eliminated the Linguistics Program on campus, which, though young, had already produced student work that had been recognized on the national level.[3] This was a severe blow not only to those pursuing a Contract Major in Linguistics,[4] but also to the entire language-learning community at Williams, which greatly benefited from the Linguistics Program as a whole.[5] Language Club was formed in part as a response to this event, in an effort to save the Linguistics Program by urging the College to hire a visiting professor, or through other means. We also hope that, through the formation of such a group and the establishment of a representational body engaged in demonstrating the interests of the language community on campus, that we can strengthen other programs that, like Linguistics, are not firmly established at Williams, such as Arabic, Italian, and the Critical Languages.

Language Club was also formed in an attempt to establish a broad sense of community among language-learning students. Williams’ small size, coupled with nature of majoring in a language,[6] means that relatively few students major in any given language, though as a whole the number of students engaging in language-learning is non-negligible.[7] Since the individual Language departments are so small,[8] it becomes difficult to develop a diverse and diverting community within those Departments. While the Center for Foreign Languages, Literatures and Cultures (CFLLC) does an excellent job of providing support to the Faculty of the Language Departments, its very nature as an administrative body makes it difficult for them to provide programming accessible to students as well. Therefore, the WCLC was created with the aim of integrating student-related programming with CFLLC programming centered about Faculty, thus hopefully creating a Williams Language Community that focused on both of these groups, creating a stable, rich, and diverse group centered about the academic study of language.

This Program Statement has attempted to acquaint those unfamiliar with the conditions of studying a language at Williams with the specific character of language-learning at this institution. While studying a language at Williams can be academically, professionally, and culturally rewarding, the above enumerated conditions can also make it an isolating and often solitary experience. We believe that the establishment of a Language Club at Williams would help to form a language-learning community composed of both students and faculty, secure the future of programs currently marginalized or in jeopardy and enrich existing programs, ensuring that languages at Williams remain strong for years to come.