2010 – East Asian Studies Students’ Union

October 31, 2010EASSU No Comments

November 1st Events

Hi all! There are two very important events happening tomorrow we’d like to remind you about!

The first is our Grad Studies workshop, which is taking place from 1-3pm in SS2115. It will be hosted by Professor Janet Poole, who has offered to share information and answer questions about applying to graduate school and the types of EAS programs offered here at UT and at outside schools. Come out to learn about your options for the future! Due to limited space, please RSVP to eassu@yahoo.ca if you plan on attending.

Also, the “alternative town hall” meeting for all organizations involved in opposing the Dean’s (former!) Academic Plan are meeting tomorrow from 12-2pm in OISE room 2214. While we won the battle against the Academic Plan, the greater war against these kind of blanketed cuts to humanities programs still needs to be fought. Under the current university policies, our department is still in danger of being disestablished at any point without democratic consultation or intellectual rationale. This meeting will be a great opportunity for students to voice their opinions so that a document of our collective demands can be drawn up and presented to the administration. Now is the time for real change!

Due to these events, EASSU will not be holding our regular office hours tomorrow from 1-3pm.

We hope to see you at either the town hall meeting or the grad studies workshop tomorrow! Stay tuned for more upcoming events, we have a busy November planned!

– Julianne

October 28, 2010EASSU No Comments

Our department is saved!

Rumours have been circling for the past two days about the status of the Dean’s plan, and although we don’t yet have an official announcement from the administration, we have had confirmation from Professor Keirstead, the chair of our department, that we should offically announce the good news:

The School of Languages and Literatures is dead!

Here’s a modified version of what Josiah Blackmore, Chair of Spanish and Portuguese, had to say earlier today:

The chairs of the “affected” units had a meeting with the dean and 3 vice-deans yesterday morning. More information will be coming later, but for the time the proposed School of Languages and Literatures is off the board, and departments for the foreseeable future will retain their autonomous status. The discussion with the dean was positive, so we have reason to be optimistic, although much work remains ahead. The dean outlined several tasks for our departments, including undergraduate enrollments (for some of the units), and other matters related to graduate applications and possible collaboration between programs. We are, however, being asked to address these concerns as autonomous departments, not as amalgamated units.

While this is certainly cause for celebration, we still remind everyone that we need to ensure that this kind of proposal is not brought to the table without fair and democratic consultation in the future. If we do not make significant changes to the way the administration at this university makes its decisions, our department is just as at risk as we were under the Dean’s Academic Plan. Unless we continue our fight to increase the transparency of the administration’s policies, we could very well be faced with a similar proposal in the near future.

For this reason, we highly encourage you to attend the UTEAU meeting on Monday, and help us to draft a document of our demands to present to the administration. More info can be found here.

Updates on the details of this news will follow as it unfolds!

– Julianne Kelso, Vice President

October 28, 2010EASSU No Comments

Our New Webmaster!

We have a new member of our EASSU team! Welcome to Jennifer Sun, our lovely and amazing new webmaster, who will now take over updating the website and making posters for our events. She’ll be a great addition to our team!

October 21, 2010EASSU No Comments

Halloween Movie Night!

EASSU will be hosting our annual Halloween movie night this year by screening Park Chan-wook’s “Thirst”, a vampire thriller! It will be in Sidney Smith room 2135 on October the 28th, at 8pm. There’s no admission charge, and we’ll even have free pizza! This event is open to all students of all departments, so bring your friends for some Halloween fun!

October 5, 2010EASSU No Comments

New Executive Team!

We had elections for our executive team last Thursday at our General Meeting – thanks to everyone who came out! We present to you our 2010/2011 exec team!

President: Michel Marion
Vice-President: Julianne Kelso
Secretary: Jessica Lee
Treasurer: Liz Cinco
Communications Coordinator: Sol Ramon
Class-representative Coordinator: Matthew Headland
External Affairs Coordinators: Jane Jhung and Youngsik Hwang
Junior Executive: Daniel Jung

The year is only just getting started, check back here soon for exciting events to come!

September 26, 2010EASSU No Comments

EASSU General Meeting & Elections!

EASSU will be holding our first general meeting for the year this Thursday, Sept 30 from 3-5pm in the Purple Lounge. There will be food! Gen meetings are a great chance to meet other EAS students and learn about how to get involved this year in your program. As you know, this year is a particularly challenging one for EAS students as our program is under attack, so we need motivated and committed individuals to help us oppose the Dean’s Academic Plan. However, we’re still also looking for students who are interested in event planning, organizing academic seminars, planning film nights, etc! EASSU will be going on as usual this year, just with some added work as we fight to keep our program.

Elections for exec positions will start at 3:30. If you’re applying for an exec position and have a class conflict at 4, let us know and we’ll try to schedule you so you can do your speech and then go to class. If you have class during the whole 3-5 period, we encourage you to still apply, just send us your application and we’ll read out your answers for you. Better yet, send us a video or audio file of you reading your application and we’ll play it for everyone who’s attending!

For more info on elections, and to find out what positions are available, see here! Deadline for applications is this Tuesday at 11:59pm, so get them in ASAP! If you have any questions, send them to us at eassu@yahoo.ca. Hope to see you there!

September 17, 2010EASSU No Comments

IMPORTANT INFORMATION SESSION

We encourage all students to come out to our information session next Tuesday at 4pm in the Purple Lounge! Learn more about the Dean’s new Academic Plan and how it will affect you, as well as the future of EAS at U of T if these plans go through. EAS faculty will be there to discuss the issue, and answer students’ questions. Hosted by EASSU and EASGSU.

If you can’t make it on Tuesday, you can learn more about the Academic Plan and our campaign at http://saveeastasianstudies.wordpress.com. Don’t let the Dean dissolve EAS at U of T! You’re paying tuition, these decisions should not be being made without your approval. Get informed, and get involved!

September 14, 2010EASSU No Comments

A New Year!

As school starts up for the year, so does EASSU! We’ll be going to classes this week to deliver announcements about upcoming events. Here are the details!

1. We are planning to have our first general meeting on September 30. We will be holding elections for our remaining executive positions at that time, so if you’re interested in being part of our team, or just want to meet fellow EAS students, we hope to see you there! As always, there will be snacks! More information will follow once a location and time are set.

2. On Tuesday, September 21st at 4pm, EASSU will be joining up with the EAS graduate student union and faculty to hold an information session about the proposed dissolution of our department. We highly encourage students to come to this event to learn about what is happening and the consequences that the Dean’s new academic plan would have on their studies and the future of EAS at the university. The session will take place in the Purple Lounge of the EAS department on the 14th floor of Robarts. Everyone is welcome!

3. There will also be town hall meetings taking place with the Dean on Thursday Sept 23 at 4pm and Monday Sept 27 at 4pm, both in the OISE auditorium. This will be a great opportunity for students and all those affected to have their voices heard! It is critical that we have a large student representation at these meetings. This may be one of very few opportunities for us to come together as a group to present our issues with the EAS department’s inclusion in the School of Language and Literatures to the Dean, so please come out and support the campaign!

For more information about our Save EAS campaign, check out the website!

July 5, 2010EASSU No Comments

SAVE EAST ASIAN STUDIES

It has just been announced that the Dean of FAS plans to effectively dissolve the East Asian Studies program at U of T. All EAS language and literature courses will be moved to a “School of Language and Literature”, along with the departments of Germanic Languages & Literatures, Italian Studies, Slavic Languages and Literatures and Spanish & Portuguese. Professors focused on Asian history will be moved to the History department, professors who teach courses on anthropology moved to the Anthropology department, etc. There will no longer be an undergraduate program in EAS offered at this university.

We currently do not know what will happen to undergraduate students that are not in their final year of study at U of T. We do know that this will have huge ramifications for the interdisciplinary study of East Asia at this university in the future.

This has been proposed during the summer in order to avoid protest from students. We must act now, before the next phase of development occurs, in order to save East Asian Studies. You can send letters to the Dean at the following address:

Meric Gertler
100 St. George Street, Room 2005
Toronto, ON M5S 3G3
Phone: 416-978-4439
Fax: 416-978-3887
Email: officeofthedean.artsci@utoronto.ca

You can check out our Save EAS blog for updates. Please also join our facebook group here and sign the online petition.