Passed by voice vote at the UFF-USF Chapter meeting April 4, 2008:
WHEREAS the study of women, African Americans, Africa, Latin American and the Caribbean are vital areas of research and teaching that are fundamental to the mission of a modern university in an ever more globalized and multicultural world, a goal explicitly recognized in the USF Strategic Plan’s goals of global engagement and impact, as well as the Provost’s e-mails to the faculty the week of March 31;
WHEREAS such programs need to be recognized and supported through their maintenance as clearly discernable, separate and autonomous units with full voice and vote;
WHEREAS sweeping all these units into a special unit under one chair would diminish their importance, identity, strength and vigor and undo the years of hard work and intellectual labor that scores of faculty members, students and administrators have invested in these areas in order to start and develop separate and independent programs that can offer the careful study and elucidation of such vital areas of human endeavor and provide national and international visibility to the University of South Florida;
BE IT RESOLVED that the autonomy and integrity of the Department of Women’s Studies, the Department of Africana Studies, the Institute on Black Life, and the Institute for the Study of Latin America and the Caribbean must be protected in these difficult times, and that great care need be taken not to foster the impression that these units and their subjects of study are of lesser importance to the University and its mission to serve our diverse and internationalized community.
