TechNews STUDENT NEWSPAPER OF ILLINOIS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY SINCE 1928 McCormick Tribune Campus Center Room 221 3201 South State Street Chicago, Illinois 60616 E-mail: editor@technewsiit.com Website: http://www.technewsiit.com 7:: STAFF Editor-in-Chief Ryan Kamphuis Assistant Editor Hannah Larson Campus Editor Utsav Gandhi AbE Editor Matti Scannell Sports Editor Nathan McMahon Business Manager Kori Bowns IT Manager Pranava Teja Surukuchi Copy Editors Travon Cooman Kristal Copeland Shireen Gul Anoopa Sundararajan Layout Editors Rachael Affenit Swasti Khuntia Distribution Manager Emilie Woog Financial Advisor Faculty Advisor Vickie Tolbert Gregory Pulliam MISSION STATEMENT Our mission is to promote student discussion and bolster the IIT community by providing a newspaper that is highly accessible, a stalwart of journalistic integrity, and a student forum. TechNews is a dedicated to the belief that a strong campus newspaper is essential to a strong campus community. 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TechNews does not accept or publish anonymous letters or sto ADVERTISING Legitimate paid advertisements. from within or outside the IIT community, which serve to produce income for the paper, are accommodated. TechNews holds the right to deny any advertisement unsuitable for publication. Media Kits are available upon request. Ad space is limited and is taken on a first-come. first—serve basis. Contact the Business Manager at business@ technewsiit.com for more information. LOCAL 8 NATIONAL ADVERTISERS To place an ad. contact us via email at business@technewsiit.com. Humanities Department offers numerous, diverse courses Greg Pulliam ASSOCIATE CHAIR, HUMANITIES DEPARTMENT I was both unsurprised and sur- prised by the article in the September 24 edi- tion of TechNews, by Austin Gonzalez and Kyle Stanevich. Headlined “Cross—enrollment at Shimer College proves pleasant experience,” the article makes the case that Shimer College’s humanities classes are a fun experience, that the faculty and staff at Shimer “make the atmo- sphere relaxed, yet professional,” and “HT has much to learn from the way Shimer handles its students.” I have no doubt that any of these claims are true. Shimer is an excellent school for students interested in an education in the classics. Their small enrollment (about 100 full-time students) and faculty and staff make personal relationships easier in a way that a larger institution like IIT does not—we really do have to work harder here to forge meaning- ful friendships among our students, faculty and staff. I also have personally witnessed IIT faculty and staff being terse with students, as the writers documented in their article. Such behavior is unfortunate; it should not happen, but it does happen. It has even been directed toward me on occasion, and I found it off- putting, too. But I told myself, “They must be having a really bad day,” treated them cordially, and found that I was treated much better by the same people the next time I had to interact with them. But for me, as associate chair of the Humanities department at IIT (and—qu dis- closure—the faculty advisor to TechNews), I was rather taken aback by Gonzalez and Stanevich’s reference to “a whopping three [first ~year] humanities [courses],” as if this were somehow out of the ordinary. While we actually have four such courses—HUM 102 Industrial Culture, HUM 104 Age of Darwin, HUM 106 Life Stories, and HUM 208 Digital Culture—many if not most universities require their first-year students to take a single course: English 101 Composition. No choices, and no ifs, ands or buts. At IIT, we integrate our primary college-level composition instruction for most students into these four HUM courses, so that rather than taking a course whose subject mat- ter is purely about how to write (talk about boringI), our courses are about actual topics, and students learn to write for college by read- ing, thinking, talking and writing about those topics. . . _. a d“ ‘7‘. The writers claim that they accept that a tech school’s humanities offerings will be “scant,” and point to Shimer’s classes as “rang[ing] from Ethical studies to basic Latin. There is even a Kubrick film studies course!” I agree that Shimer presents interesting alter- natives to IIT’s humanities courses, but the courses the writers name are not the equivalent of HUM 102, 104, 106 or 208; they are more the equivalent of our upper-level humanities classes, which are actually much more numer- ous and diverse than Gonzalez and Stanevich may realize, which is understandable, since they both seem to be first-semester freshmen. This semester alone we have courses in Latin American Film, Ethnicity, Chicago History and Prohibition, The Holocaust, Di- sasters, American Music, Gender, World Re- ligions, Islamic Thought, Spanish Language and Culture, Video Gaming History, Graphic Novels, Sherlock Holmes, Real Men in Fiction, Ancient Philosophy, Nietzsche, 19th Century American Art, Linguistics, Journalism and Bioethics—yes, we do ethics at IIT. That’s not anywhere near being an exhaustive list. In the Spring, we will offer upper- level courses on 13 topics that have never been offered before at IIT, including Language and Technology, Consumer Culture, Anglo—Saxon Britain, Game Design, African Literature, Scientists in Film, Suffragettes to Drag Kings, Race, Gender and Sexuality in Music, and oth- ers. Another two dozen or so regularly-offered courses will also be on the bill. .- --, a, a... ”.1:an taken .Shimer’s. versions of our lower-level humanities classes, the ones that count as equivalents to HUM 102, 104, 106 or 208, Gonzalez and Stanevich will be eligible to take any of this array of topics at IIT, or they can take more of Shimer’s alternatives, or both. By the way, if you’re wondering about those Shimer College courses that are equivalent to Industrial Culture, Age of Darwin, Life Stories and Digital Culture, it turns out that there are only two: Humanities 1, and Humanities 2. I like our options at least as much as theirs.