On Sept. 10, Student Life reported that the College of Arts & Sciences created a task force charged with exploring the potential reorganization or merging of six humanities programs and departments: African & African American Studies (AFAS); American Culture Studies (AMCS); Education; Global Studies; Jewish, Islamic, and Middle Eastern Studies (JIMES); and Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies (WGSS). 

Just over a month later, on Oct. 22, Student Life reported that the Dean of WashU’s College of Arts & Sciences, Feng Sheng Hu, officially disbanded the task force due to factors which included student and faculty opposition to the potential merger. 

Following the news of the task force’s formation, faculty and students from affected departments mobilized through conversation to discuss the work of the task force and advocate for their fields.

Although the task force sparked concern among students, junior Ian Gomez, a Germanic Languages and Global Studies double major with a concentration in International Affairs, felt students’ concerns were heard. 

“I am really, really happy with the Global Studies department as a whole and the strength of that community as a whole, because I was being actively engaged by people,” Gomez said. “People were willing to sit down and have meetings with me to explain what was going on and just provide me an informed perspective.” 

Not only were faculty receptive to meeting with students, but Gomez also said the Global Studies department united and formed a strong community in response to the merger proposition.

“I’m very optimistic based off of the fact that we had a community that rallied around us really really quickly,” Gomez said. “These conversations were being held, people were talking about it, meetings were being held. There was a lot of action that occurred, even if it wasn’t organized action.” 

Organized action extended beyond individual departments. Student Union (SU) also took action after seeing the negative student response to the task force. 

“We saw SU Senate very specifically, as kind of like an organizer between many different actors on campus — of course, mostly undergraduate student actors,” senior Ella Scott, SU Vice President of Engagement, said. 

In response, SU launched a zine project — a creative initiative designed to celebrate and advocate for the six departments under review. 

“We were going to publish six separate zines, almost like six editions of the same zine. It was going to be ‘Our Departments Matter,’ and then each individual department would have …  [a] creative space to represent why these six departments individually matter and why they’re very important to students,” Scott said. 

The zine project is currently suspended due to the disbanding of the task force. Nonetheless, SU hopes to channel the students’ advocacy toward other projects and initiatives. 

“Although the task force [is] currently done, I would argue that students probably don’t feel like it’s the end. In this whole attack on higher education, which happened to be coinciding with this proposed task force — whether or not those are connected, I can’t say — it’s a scary time to be a student,” Scott said. 

In Scott’s view, the dissolution of the task force left behind an energized student body and discussions without a clear ending. She said that if students wanted to continue the conversation, they should contact her at [email protected]. 

“We don’t just want to drop all this effort that we started,” Scott said. “There are a lot of other avenues that we can take to stay engaged with all of these organizations and all these students. So we’re kind of in that discussion now, like where do we go from here.” Scott said. 

For Gomez, the collective strength of the communities found through the work of the task force brings him hope. 

“I think, in the future, the fact that I know that we have the support system out there makes me very hopeful about how things could turn out,” Gomez said.