This letter is to inform you of my complete disgust with the cinema department, after learning of the decision not to hire either David Laderman or Scott Simmon to a tenured position. They are two of the finest instructors in the department, and certainly the most qualified to teach their given subjects, doctorate degree or not.
Although it comes as no surprise to me that the department would take it upon itself to commit this absurdity, I am still incensed. During my stay at this university, I have been witness to the most incredible incompetence and ill treatment toward the students imaginable. I might add that these students not only pay university salaries, but are crazy enough to major in such an esoteric subject as the cinema, and therefore should be treated with at least a semblance of respect by the staff and faculty at this institution.
The failure to realize the value of instructors of the caliber exhibited by Laderman and Simmon is an act of suicide by the cinema department, and fits the general pattern of utter stupidity displayed by its policy to continually push the best and brightest instructors, students and staff into the peripheral. Is this to ensure that the reputation of the department continues to decline? If so, then I commend your efforts. I came to SF State to learn about film. I was one of the luckier students allowed the opportunity to take film history from an actual film scholar, and to learn about critical and genre studies from someone with the astuteness of Professor Laderman.
This is the final blow to an already gangrenous curriculum. Congratulations! The cinema department has completely dismantled itself and cut off its own foot!
It is my prediction that the film department will cease to exist very shortly -- not due to lack of funding -- but because we all know that this is a scapegoat used by the liberal left to hide the fact that they're not concerned with education. Indoctrination, by means of a politically correct agenda that is so pervasive -- it smacks of Nazi propaganda tactics -- is the primary concern.
Although I cannot speak for the rest of the students in the department, I can say from my own experience here at SF State and at De Anza Community College, if it were not for professors Laderman and Simmon, my education at this university would have been piss-poor at best.
I can say without hesitation that I am now thoroughly convinced that the state education system is an idea that has failed. It has failed, because the people that are in positions that affect the curriculum of this university have been in academia for so long that their reasoning powers have faded into oblivion. They have forgotten what an education is and have shifted their interests to perpetuating an inflated idea of their own importance.
They have forgotten that it is the students that hunger for a true education and receive irrelevant fodder in its stead. They will not fund education, nor will they send their children to any government-run education system.
I am one of those people, and you, by your arrogance and lack of consideration, have created me.