City Planning Dept. will not be shut down

The roller coaster ride for the Department of City and Regional Planning at the Graduate School of Fine Arts is finally slowing down. Earlier this year, when questions about the financial viability of the department were abound, students and faculty alike feared the department would be closed. But an agreement reached last month by City and Regional Planning Chairman Tony Tomazinis, the Provost's Office and the Vice President for Finance Stephen Golding has lifted the freeze on admissions to the city planning masters and doctoral programs. GSFA Dean Patricia Conway said that 1994 fall admissions to those degree programs were frozen because the department had failed to come up with a suitable budget. By March 21, however, Conway said that an appropriate budget was submitted and the admissions freeze was lifted. Three days before Conway's decision, Faculty Senate Committee on Academic Freedom and Responsibility Chairperson and Law Professor Frank Goodman said his committee issued an opinion stating that "it was a violation of academic due process -- and academic freedom ultimately" to have ordered the suspensions of student admissions to the City Planning degree programs. "There just wasn't adequate consultation with relative faculty groups in advance of that decision," Goodman said. Goodman emphasized that the timing of the release of his committee's opinion three days before Conway's decision was coincidence. "By the time I got [their] opinion, I had already withdrawn the request to freeze admissions," Conway said. The text of that opinion has been distributed to the entire GSFA standing and adjunct faculty, Tomazinis said. The accord made with the Provost's Office and the Office of the Vice President for Finance states that City and Regional Planning must conform to a "performance standard" in admissions in order to keep its admissions open. Tomazinis said yesterday that the number of applicants for the fall are at "record levels" and are at their largest since 1974. "We've almost doubled the number since last year," he said. "The financial concerns the dean was expressing earlier are now history." Last week, Eugene Kohn, chairperson of GSFA's Board of Overseers, met with faculty and students to discuss the future of GSFA and help quell lingering fears that City Planning is in immediate danger of being cancelled. Kohn said there are absolutely no plans to close City and Regional Planning, and that it "was never the intention" of the overseers to suggest such a move. In a letter to Conway dated last October, Kohn wrote "the most debilitating factor" at GSFA is "the persistent, commutative and irremedial deficit" carried each year by the department. Kohn further wrote that it is "both academically and fiscally unwise to sacrifice the solid core" of GSFA to rescue one department. Kohn said yesterday the role of the board of overseers is not to set policy for GSFA, but to offer guidance and facilitate the resolution of issues of all kinds. "The goal was not to close down the department, although there was a lot of concern for the department," Kohn said. "We're all aware that there were some explosive times, but now we're tending to move into a more neutral field." While City and Regional Planning has reopened its admissions, the department must still address more long-term budgetary problems. In addition, a curriculum committee has been formed to examine the academic needs of the department. "We'll know more about the admissions numbers as they unfold in the spring, and the financial component goes all the way into early fall," Golding said. "We'll make sure the benchmarks are in place and the curriculum committee has time by next fall to make its academic recommendations -- as long as the department reaches those benchmarks, the University has agreed to provide some transitional support." Conway said this is "good news" for City and Regional Planning.