Sites Of Salvation; Classics And Small Liberal Arts Colleges

Abstract

Sites Of Salvation; Classics And Small Liberal Arts Colleges Shelley P. Haley keywords endangered Classics, small liberal arts colleges (SLACs), state of SCS as in previous scs/apa presidential address publications, my text is only lightly edited, and footnotes are at a minimum. The Society is financially better off in the fiscal year 2021 than we anticipated. Thanks to the excellent stewardship of our financial trustees and the finance committee, along with the superlative direction and grant-writing skills of Helen Cullyer, our Executive Director, we ended up on more solid ground than we expected after year one of the pandemic. Our first-ever fully virtual meeting was a huge success with very few glitches. We looked forward to an in-person meeting in 2022 in San Francisco; Helen sent out a survey for the membership to weigh on the meeting mode, and you voted for a hybrid model which, while being the most expensive of the options, is the most equitable in terms of access. So, working with our colleagues and members in AIA, we planned for a hybrid meeting. But COVID was not finished with us yet, and the omicron variant threw a spanner into the works: we had to switch to an all-virtual meeting. We all owe a huge thank-you not only to Helen but also to her staff, Cherane Ali, the Director of Meetings and Events, and Erik Shell, the Communications and Services Coordinator. The transition from hybrid to virtual within ten days of the event would have been impossible without the hard work and persistence of these folks. Please send them your thanks in the chat! Furthermore, it is with both great sadness and great pride that we will bid farewell to Erik, who will start a new position in Chicago at the end of this meeting. Erik joined the staff of SCS in 2016 and it has been a great joy to work with him. We wish Erik all the best. [End Page 285] In some ways, the disruption to the planning of the 2022 annual meeting has, at least for me, caused more sadness and melancholy. Plans for a virtual meeting in 2021 were concretized early in 2020, partly because we had never done this before and partly because there was no path out of the pandemic at the time. There was excitement about trying something new and having it succeed beyond expectations. Then came the vaccines early in 2021, and we were all hopeful that we could have an in-person meeting in 2022. That hope persisted even as the rate of vaccinations plateaued, and the vaccines became the victims of politics and disinformation. Although most people living in the United States did get vaccinated, the rate was not high enough to stop variants—first delta and now omicron—from getting established. So the leadership had to adjust and adapt as members changed their registrations. I want to acknowledge that, in addition to the economic costs of having to cancel flight arrangements and hotel rooms, there has also been a psychological cost. Even the most introverted of us still need human contact. We want the networking, catching up with old friends, and the spur-of-the-moment greeting/meeting in an elevator or at the registration desk. Hopefully the 2023 meeting can bring these aspects back. The year 2021 saw Classics in the news: there were articles in the New York Times Magazine, Times Higher Education, and others. The pandemic has put even greater stress on vulnerable Classics programs around the country, as administrations use it as an excuse to eliminate not just Classics but other Humanities programs, especially language-based ones. This is a great segue to the topic of my presidential address: "Classics and Small Liberal Arts Colleges (SLACs): Sites of Salvation?" Being both a participant in and an observer of these very public debates on the discipline and the challenges we face, I felt called upon to reflect on my place in the field. I began my career as a Classics professor at Luther College, a small liberal arts college in Decorah, Iowa. It was the height of economic hard times as a result of the oil...