As many may know, first year writing is under attack at Utah State University, which is home to USU Press which publishes significant works in our field like "Naming What We Know." While this is only happening at the moment at Utah State, I am passing this along as many of us have faced similar threats in our own states and countries.
Dr. Shane Graham of Utah State has written about this attack in this column which I’m paraphrasing below: https://www.sltrib.com/opinion/commentary/2025/03/14/voices-new-utah-bill-is-an-attack/
"Utah legislature has just passed a bill that radically transforms general education at USU, and takes control for staffing in first-year writing courses away from the English Department.
Associate Vice Provost for General Education Harrison Kleiner said during a committee hearing that our current system is “broken” and “not serving our students well,” but he presents no evidence for this beyond his personal views. Kleiner and the bill’s senate sponsor, John Johnson, openly admit the bill’s political goals: to make students read “great books ‘predominantly from Western civilization’ and about ‘the rise of Christianity.’” And the conservative magazine National Review has crowed about this bill being “a game changer nationally.”
This law will replace three courses currently required of all students at USU, two of them first-year writing classes offered by the Department of English. Replacing these with “great books” courses will negate years of hard work we and our colleagues — many of us experts in composition and writing studies — have done: conducting research into how to effectively teach students to become better writers, training instructors in those methods and navigating the new world of artificial intelligence."
To become law, this bill only needs the signature of Utah Governor Spencer Cox as it has already passed the house and senate in Utah. While it may seem that there isn’t much we can do as a community, I’m passing this along so that composition at Utah State doesn’t die in the dark. I also feel that it’s important to reach out to any faculty you may know at Utah State to offer them encouragement, to write to Governor Cox if you have ties to Utah, and to learn, whatever it is that we can, from what’s happening.
You can read the bill here:
https://le.utah.gov/~2025/bills/static/SB0334.html
Thank you all for your time,
Loren Smith
Loren James Smith (he/him)
Graduate Teaching Assistant
Assistant Director of Composition
Ohio University, Department of English
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