Stephanie Blair | Copy Editor

On March 29, Western’s Registrar announced the Faculty Senate’s decision: it was voted that Western Oregon will no longer require students to graduate with a minor.

Western was the last public university to require a minor, and was in the minority of universities in the nation. The adults in my life have always been surprised by this requirement. And for good reason: it’s a ridiculous requirement.

Had it not been required when I started here, I would have avoided taking 16 credits that I didn’t need — a full term’s worth, for many — simply because I kept trying to force myself into a minor that fit. I love my major — it’s what I’ve wanted to pursue for almost my entire life — and so, finding something else that I wanted to put my tuition and time into almost as much was a struggle. I ultimately ended up enrolling for a humanities minor, because it has no real structure and made the most of my random grab bag of upper divisions.

In fact, with no minor required, I could have graduated two or three terms earlier than I am. And so, future graduates will be far better off than I am and get out earlier. Or, at least, they would, if the minimum credit requirement hadn’t remained the same.

It’s true that my minor plan was a mess and I would have benefitted from not being required to complete one, but it’s also true that I needed every credit I took along the way to graduate. With all of my wandering through the course catalog, I’m graduating after attending for four years — 12 terms — and taking 187 credits. That number is, as I’ve been informed by past graduates, current classmates and professors, extremely low for a Western student.

All of this to say: dropping the minor requirement is a start, but Western’s graduation requirements need an overhaul. If Western wants what’s best for it’s students, rather than what will make them the most money, they need to stop telling students that it’s “perfectly normal” to take five years to graduate and start examining why students are getting trapped for an extra year.

Contact the author at sblair13@wou.edu

Photo by: Paul F. Davis