John Evanishyn
Reporter
When I read the finalized FJC cuts—discontinuing German, Nordic Studies, and the Norwegian minor—my mind went right to Hong Hall. ‘Two dorm wings empty,’ I thought.
Hong Hall is the oldest and one of the most fruitful in terms of the Student-Faculty collaboration of PLU’s Learning Communities. Hong Hall became established as housing for students studying languages, along with international students in preparation for the 2004-2005 academic year. The international wing has since become the International Honors Program (IHON) wing. Now the question that lies ahead, What will be the next change for Hong’s wings?
Associate Vice President for Campus Life, Tom Huelsbeck, states, “the impact of the FJC process is designed to be realized not in the upcoming year, but in the 2022-2023 academic year. Therefore, we are expecting and planning to continue with the existing curriculum and programs for the 2021-2022 academic year.” In the short-term Hong Hall will be able to live out its era of five language wings for another year.
There is no planning yet for what will become specifically of the German and Norwegian wings. This is natural. Residential Life will work alongside Languages and Literature to determine Hong’s future. But for the time being, Huelsbeck writes, “we have very intentionally not yet reached out to our faculty colleagues about this to allow for the process to work out and more pressing matters to be addressed.”
The Spanish Wing in Hong Hall was the only space I ever lived while on-campus. Being surrounded by fellow language students, while also getting to learn about their other disciplines of study was a pleasure of mine. I will never forget being a First Year and having a dinner of tamales with my wing-mates and the Hispanic Studies Faculty in the Language Resource Center. English wasn’t allowed at the table. And though this dinner was outside the classroom, I figured if I couldn’t get my Spanish together, they’d peg me as a fraud and boot me from Hong. That didn’t happen. Laughs were had, steaming tamales were eaten, and verbs were mis-conjugated.
As long as experiences like these can still be had in Hong when the 2022-2023 school year hits, I can’t see Hong Hall being much less than what it was for me. It is my hope that German and Norwegian, along with other languages, can still be represented in Hong, even if they don’t have a dorm room or a major to their name.
