By Will Weinstein

A proposal for a joint five-college Media Studies program, similar to that of Women’s Studies and Black Studies, is in the early stages of development. A preliminary proposal has been started at Pitzer, and next week faculty from the five colleges will meet to discuss the basic logistics of the hypothetical joint program.

The current Media Studies program at Pomona, one of the first to be offered at any liberal arts college, is an interdisciplinary program which encompasses all facets of media including film and media production, as well as media theory.

"Media Studies is a cutting-edge field," said Politics Professor John Seery, Acting Coordinator of the Media Studies Program. "Unlike other programs that you might find at places like USC or UCLA, Pomona has a more analytical, liberal arts approach to media studies."

According to Seery, a joint program would allow students to more easily access the resources of each college, and make the program run more smoothly.

"Each college has a different strength in a specific area of Media Studies," Seery said. "The idea would be to take advantage of each college’s resources. For instance, Harvey Mudd has the computer resources, CMC has great interactive classrooms, Scripps has a lot of faculty interest, and Pitzer has a lot of new technology. Pomona’s role in all of this would be to provide the liberal arts side to the program."

In his opening convocation this school year, Stanley said that he viewed Media Studies as one of the three cutting-edge fields that hold great promise for the future.

However, Stanley is conservative in his view of the future of the program.

"The question is how well we can support [this department]," Stanley said. "There’s no point in having a department if we can’t do it well."

Although the program is an independent program to the college, due to differences in equipment and class offerings between the other colleges offering Media Studies programs, most students end up taking several of their classes at the other colleges. "The curriculum has had to change just about every semester," said Seery. "It certainly would be nice to have more courses locked in."

Dana DuBois ’00, a Media Studies major has been able to avoid having to take most of her classes off-campus. However, she has experienced numerous because interdisciplinary classes conflict.

"It gets frustrating at times because so many departments are involved," DuBois said. "Last year, there were two courses that I needed to take for Media Studies. Both met at the same time because they were in different departments. I ended up having to do an independent study."

Due to the lack of having established Media Studies departments, the programs are just concentrations at the colleges, many of the of the logistics of the program have to be worked out by the individual faculty members instead of the administration, says Pitzer Professor of Media Studies Jesse Learner.

He feels that a joint program would alleviate some of the pressure put on the faculty to be in charge of curriculum and scheduling.

Although there are several professors at Pomona teaching classes related to Media Studies, Professor of English Kathleen Fitzpatrick is Pomona’s only faculty member contracted to teach Media Studies classes. Her agreement is that she must teach at least two courses in the field per year. "The problem is that there is nobody else," Fitzpatrick said.

"Unfortunately, the faculty and school haven’t been able to keep up pace with the increasing demand from students," concluded Fitzpatrick.

The number of graduating students majoring in Media Studies continues to grow rapidly. There are 19 seniors this year majoring in Media Studies, up from only 9 in ’94-’95, and 15 last school year.

One possibility with potential to alleviate some of the problems would be to form a full Media Studies department. This would make is so the college would have to hire several full-time Media Studies professors.

Fitzpatrick thinks that establishing a five-college program would be, "a step in the right direction." However, the school does not have sufficient funding at this time to establish a new department.

Professors are optimistic that a joint program would be supported by the administration in the near future, possibly next year. Both Seery and Lerner stressed that the point of combining the programs would be an easy and cost-effective way to pool resources between the colleges.

"We are not trying to replicate the other programs [those at universities like USC]; we don’t have the resources to do so," Lerner said. "We want a primarily funkier, more grassroots media program that’s more socially responsible."