After a brief hiatus, the Experimental College is admirably offering Hindi/Urdu in the fall. Ex-College director Robyn Gittleman has also assured students that they will be able to pursue their studies for three semesters, enabling them to complete half of the foreign language requirement. In conjunction with the highly qualified professor on board, this news should bolster enrollment significantly. Next fall's offerings are more meaningful than the token of diversity that last year's conversational courses represented and they come at an appropriate time, as the Asian subcontinent is a populous and important region.
Gittleman and the Ex-College should be applauded for broadening the curriculum in ways that are fiscally infeasible for the College of Arts and Sciences, which must keep its focus and funds on strengthening the departments that serve as the pillars of a liberal arts education. The Tufts Association for South Asians (TASA) should also be commended for a successful lobbying mission, but it should now turn its attention to bringing funds into the University rather than trying to finagle them from other places. The group has lofty goals of creating a culture house, a minor, a major, and increasing the number of South Asian faculty. TASA should think more creatively about ways to diversify the campus, as manipulating Ballou is not the only answer.
The Ex-College affirms its mission with a Hindi/Urdu program, as its value to Tufts is often in these offerings, rather than the plethora of one-time courses offered by undergraduates who have found a way to turn a hobby into an academic course for credit. There are always a handful of dubious courses in the Ex-college, but fortunately Hindi/Urdu will stand apart, as it could very well be picked up by Arts and Sciences and follow its predecessors Chinese and Arabic - which had their origins in the Ex-College- to the third floor of Olin.
