In the next year, Pomona College Media Studies majors will find a shell of the program that the college once expected to develop. Associate Professor Kathleen Fitzpatrick, the only professor on faculty contractually obligated to Media Studies, is going on sabbatical. Studio 47, Pomona’s student-owned-and-run production facility, has lost its location and looks to be in danger of losing its funding. Meanwhile, Pomona has decided to rescind a $20,000 per year payment to Pitzer College that subsidizes their media production facility. Pomona students use this facility because they have no comparable, academically funded resource. Pomona currently has no definite plans regarding purchase or development of its own facilities.

Pomona was the first liberal arts college in the country to create a Media Studies major. The program garners vast student interest and is one of the top ten majors at Pomona, with 31 students currently enrolled, and 15 majors graduating last year. Despite its growth, however, the program lacks the support necessary for enlargement. The program is unable to provide enough faculty to deal with the constantly overflowing introductory class. They cannot create a space for students, faculty, and resources. And it has been impossible to develop the technology that students are requesting in order to develop the practical aspects of their field.

"We are commonly referred to as the fastest growing major at Pomona," Media Studies liaison Brian Schwarz ’01 said, "but [we] receive no additional funds."

Fitzpatrick is the only Pomona professor hired to work in Media Studies, and only "2/5 of me is media studies," she said (the other 3/5 being devoted to the English department). We "really are hampered by there being only me."

Beyond the immediate problems of her absence, Fitzpatrick noted longer-term difficulties of not having more faculty. "We are in the best possible position in terms of a Media Studies program, but we can’t take advantage of it. We can’t expand because it’s only me," she said.

In addition, Fitzpatrick is going on sabbatical next year, which will create a large gap in teaching and advising.

"We need at minimum one more [Media Studies faculty member], because while we have a good number of faculty involved, including Professors Sheila Pinkel, Jurgen Froelich, and Phyllis Jackson, they aren’t really Media Studies core faculty, and can’t really be called on for things like advising," Fitzpatrick said. She does "just about" all of the advising.

"All the professors associated with Media Studies, the main one being Kathleen Fitzpatrick, have affiliations with other departments, such as English for Kathleen and Politics for John Seery," said Schwarz.

Professor of Politics John Seery has no contractual obligations to Media Studies, yet is serving as acting chair of the program. He was hired by Pomona solely as a member of the Politics Department.

In the past semester, Studio 47, which is not technically affiliated with Media Studies, found itself in the midst of a funding crisis: "Last semester Studio 47 was supposed to receive funding from all five colleges for its operating budget, a large chunk of which was supposed to go towards a new video-editing system, to my knowledge, the only one of its kind for student use at Pomona," Media Studies liaison Alex Cho ’01 said.

"Due to miscommunication and an inefficient 5-C funding system, that money appeared to be in jeopardy, which is where re-requests to the Pomona Senate came in. Finally, President Peter Stanley generously offered to fill in the gap and we were able to get our new G4 computer on schedule. Anyway, it’s immensely frustrating for students who want to make video and students who need to make video that there’s such a lack of resources," Cho said.

There is a misconception among students and faculty that Studio 47 receives funds from the Media Studies program, but the facility has always been a completely student-run enterprise. Faculty of the program, however, would like to be able to provide Studio 47 with funding, and to create a joint facility.

In addition, the Studio Art department needs the space in Rembrandt that Studio 47 currently occupies. "We had to plead to get them to let us stay while we look for a new" location, Seery said.

The creation of such a facility was what Seery had in mind when he requested that Pomona halt payments of $20,000 per year to Pitzer to subsidize their production equipment costs. According to Seery, Pomona "struck a deal with Pitzer five or six years ago." It was a "complementary relationship. We had a number of students taking classes there and they were investing in production equipment. We started giving them $20,000 per year, with the tacit understanding that our students would be able to use [the equipment]."

This past year, however, while trying to find funds for the department, Seery and Fitzpatrick determined that the conditions were no longer such that an exchange seemed appropriate. "All students were not getting access to the equipment," Seery said. "Only those students taking Pitzer classes were able to use the resources." In addition, "over the last couple of years the net flow of students [cross-registering] has gone to us." Finally, according to Assistant Director of Media Studies Production and Services Eric Otto, Pitzer will be hiring an additional Media Studies professor, in addition to the two that they already have.

Therefore, said Seery, "the justification for the money seemed to no longer obtain. We should not be subsidizing the hiring of Pitzer faculty. In addition," he said, "I believe it violates the spirit of cooperation among the colleges. We’re not supposed to pay each other, even if [cross-registration/inter-collegiate facility use] is lopsided."

After some discussion, Dean Palmer agreed to withdraw the funds. However, he noted that the purchase of equipment "is not simply a matter of buying hardware. Media equipment requires a rather large support structure, including the availability of technologically sophisticated staff personnel. Therefore, we are not just talking about a redirection of funds. In addition, there is a need for space, and that matter is now being considered. Pomona College is extremely short of space for all kinds of purposes."

While Seery acknowledges that these issues are relevant, he also argues that they take place within a larger debate that has been taking place for five to eight years. "It is unfair to students that we advertise Media Studies as a fully respectable program and we are trying to run it on the cheap," he said. "Students want production capabilities, and not just Media Studies students. Other departments want digital cameras, web cams, and web casting capabilities."

"Peter Stanley has recognized Media Studies as an important, vibrant, popular, and auspicious [area for the college to develop]," Seery said. "He has called it one of three areas that can make Pomona distinctive. But the program," he noted, "is dying on the vine."

"It’s not getting the staffing [it needs]: we have adjunct [professors] teaching introductory classes and we have to plead for replacements [for] when Fitzpatrick goes on sabbatical."

Media Studies graduate Mark Kawano ’00, who was a program liaison and intern last year, echoed Seery’s concerns: "[The program has] always been up in the air since [Professor Brian] Stonehill passed away. The whole direction of Media Studies just sort of died with him. It’s really unfortunate. I was in the last class that had any contact with him. His students were carrying on his vision after he passed away, and now they’re all gone. And it was really such a vision, not something concrete, so no one was able to carry through with it. The resources were never there."

Kawano’s experience with Media Studies made him "very marketable, because of the skills I had learned. The Internet made everyone want to use computers . . . [and now computer-oriented companies are] pushing towards hiring people like me, with a liberal arts education. It seems like that’s dying out at Pomona."

While he was at Pomona, he felt that "it seemed everything was red-taped. It seemed like it was hard to get alumni donations, I guess because they can’t donate to a specific department. Because of that it was always the administration that was in charge of the distribution of money and after Stonehill there was no strong force to [effectively] say that it was really important."

Kawano added, "Media studies is so important in this country that not being able to teach media literacy is frightening." Media literacy is the study of how the media manipulates its viewers. "And you can’t teach someone to decipher the message in a book without teaching them to read."

The Student Life (TSL) attempted to contact President Peter Stanley, who declined comment, deferring instead to Dean of Faculty Hans Palmer. That same day, a meeting with Seery and Fitzpatrick was called by Palmer. At this meeting, Palmer informed the other two that he would be pulling the money from Pitzer, and wanted to start making a timeline for future development.

But, according to Seery, "this conversation has been going on for at least five years." The fact that nothing has happened yet reflects the administrations "Hamlet style of management, where ambivalence paralyzes our action. It is unfair to faculty, students, and trustees who have been led to believe that Media Studies [is thriving here]."

Indeed in a letter to TSL Palmer wrote, "Media Studies seems to be thriving here at Pomona." he added that, "We are attempting to support it in the near term as best we can, and we are developing longer term plans.

Cho remarked, "It’s frustrating that the college is moving so slowly in making change. You’d think the fact that more and more students are interested in Media Studies would alone be convincing for the college to take some action, seek out donors or funding for a new tenure-track position, maybe even put us in a space of our own, but it hasn’t happened yet."