The Portuguese Tripos is to be suspended because it is too popular, it was suggested at an open meeting on the night of Wednesday 31 January. It has been argued that there are too few Portuguese lecturers at present to put in the number of teaching hours required for the twenty-odd undergraduates studying the language.

Earlier on Wednesday afternoon, the General Board of Education had been engaged in discussion concerning the decision to suspend Portuguese in a meeting at which a majority of senior members expressed concern that the proposal of the MML Faculty Board provided inadequate explanations for the suspension of the Portuguese Tripos. While this meeting was taking place, students from across the University took part in a protest in front of the Senate House, where a giant banner intended for the Pro Vice-Chancellor was covered with hundreds of signatures and flags of Portuguese-speaking nations.

In the meeting at Queens’ College’s Fitzpatrick Hall on Wednesday night, Jacob Head, CUSU Education Officer and member of the University General Board, revealed that the main threat to the Tripos has come because “Portuguese is too popular”. The University teaching officer for Portuguese has been working longer hours than is permitted by the Resource Allocation Model as it currently stands; if Portuguese is to be continued as a full Tripos subject the University would need to employ more teaching officers to meet the demand.

Recent changes to the University’s Resource Allocation Model mean that funding for a further Portuguese teaching officer would have to come from elsewhere in the MML Faculty. Head suggested that funding is unlikely to be allocated away from more popular languages such as French and German, which are more likely to be represented on the Standing Committee on Academic Vacancies, the committee which reallocates funding when posts become vacant. No member of the committee would be likely to propose the reduction of funding for his or her own language provision, he pointed out.

The University has yet to recommend that the Portuguese department, currently compromising just two full-time lecturers, be reduced. But concerns were raised in the meeting of the serious possibility that the Lisbon-based Instituto Camoes, which funds one of the two full-time members of Portuguese teaching staff, would discontinue funding if such a move were to take place.

The President of the Instituto Camoes was last week angered to discover that the subject was to be suspended only after it had been broadcast on Portuguese national radio. The University was unwilling to comment on the current state of discussion.
Michael Minden, chair of the faculty board which originally proposed the suspension of the Portuguese Tripos, told Varsity “We want to restructure Portuguese according to our existing resources”. He said that additional funding would be welcome, but refused to comment on future resource allocation.

Last Thursday, Professor Melveena McKendrick, Pro Vice-Chancellor for Education and Professor of Spanish, sent an email to students warning of proposed changes in the faculty. In it she spoke of the need to “protect and preserve” Portuguese.

Head expressed surprise that the Pro Vice-Chancellor felt it necessary to send out a notice to students threatening the future of their Tripos before any official procedures for making such a decision has been enacted. “Things have to go through the proper channels”, he told the meeting, pointing the finger at an administrative system which delegates power to individuals rather than to bodies.

In a resolution at this week’s CUSU Council, representatives voted unanimously to defend minority subjects on all University committees.

Lizzie Mitchell