History Depletes Itself

A total of 19 professors in the Department of History are on sabbatical for all or part of this year, leaving the department a watered-down version of its normal self. Department members admit that this is an unusually high number, and though concentrators had fair warning that the ranks would be diminished, the lack of options in this year’s course catalogue still came as an unpleasant surprise to many.

“Yeah, I am mad!” says Riley C.G. Mendoza ’04, amid a string of complaints. “We don’t really have that many options.” Simeon M. Zahl ’04 says the recent sabbaticals have left him in a bit of a quandary: “Dude, I have to take four classes in German history next year because both of the people who teach German history are gone,” he says. Some concentrators, such as Michael M. Sutton ’05, note that with fewer professors comes a dramatic decrease in the variety of the department. “It’s impossible to stay alert when you’re forced to listen to a lecture from the same morbidly obese white man with a suspect comb-over for three different classes,” he says. “You would think for 40 Gs a year I could get a little variety,”