When the human biology program winks out of existence in June, it will leave two College Courses, one unemployed administrator and a host of faculty still dedicated to the program's ideals. At a campus that has been dealing with budget cuts for more than a year, the decision has been met with student outcry, but not much student action.
Funding the program for another year would have taken about a $61,000 commitment by the College, according to Julia Lloyd Wright, human biology's program coordinator.
It had been funded by a grant from the Hewlett Foundation and a matching grant from the College. The grant will expire after this term.
The larger campus community first learned about the College's May 2 decision not to fund the human biology program about a week after the decision. Since then, Lee Witters, the medical school and biology department professor who is chair of the program, has been flooded by student response.
"All of us have been pretty overwhelmed by the responses we've gotten from students, and in some cases their parents, about what's been going on with the human biology program, and it's been very positive," Witters said in an interview last week. "So we've chatted as a faculty and we've decided ... to keep this program alive as sort of a virtual program.
"There's still a group of faculty interested in and dedicated to bringing this kind of interdisciplinary education to Dartmouth students."
The human biology program, officially known as the Humanitates Vitae, will still be losing its office, its listing in the Dartmouth's course listings and its institutional support. Wright, an employee of the college for nearly 20 years, will be let go.
However, three courses from the program will continue to be funded by the College Course Committee, at least in the near future, and will remain unchanged. These are "The Biology and Politics of Starvation," "Reproduction in the 21st Century" and "Life on Mars?"
The program's website will remain online, regularly updated by Witters and expanded to include streaming video of the program's past science congresses. And Witters said that he and the faculty are committed to finding a way to fund the other two courses in the program as well.
The College's decision not to fund the human biology program has brought the program supporters, but it still has not engendered the same degree of student response as budget cuts that have also been announced in the past year.
Heidi Williams '03 made herself a sounding board for student response to the decision when she co-authored an editorial in The Dartmouth about the decision.
Students had been confused or concerned with the lack of student input in to the decisions, Williams said. She also heard "a lot of people talking about misplaced priorities."
"Most of what I've been getting is really incredible amounts of sympathy," Williams said. "But they assume it can't be changed."
Part of the reason there has not been a strong student outcry to reverse the decision may have been its timing.
"I feel like for a lot of people this is one in a series of events. Some of them have been more visible, like the swim team, some less visible," Williams said. Students have made efforts to reverse the decision in the past. "Some of them were successful, but a lot of them weren't. Students are feeling like they've worked on a lot of things and haven't seen a lot of them change."
Faculty were also not consulted but may see themselves as closer to the decision. Provost Berry Scherr, who comes from the faculty, made the decision, along with Dean of the Faculty Michael Gazzaniga and Dean of the Medical School Ethan Dmitrovsky.
Head of the Jewish Studies Program Susannah Heschel said she did not know the details of the human biology program's budget, but "I'm sure that if had to be cut it was for the right reason.
"In an ideal world, we'd have all worthy programs funded. But if you support one program, another may not be."
In a BlitzMail message to The Dartmouth, Gazzaniga explained his decision.
"The Human Biology Program was funded, from the beginning from outside sources, from a grant to Professor Witters," he wrote. "Thus we did not decide to stop funding. We were simply unable to pick up the considerable costs. We encouraged Professor Witters to seek other funds from other sources on campus."
