Readers Write: Hamline creative writing sunset, mental health treatment

Opinion editor’s note: Strib Voices publishes letters from readers online and in print each day. To contribute, click here.

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Thank you for publishing the March 23 story “MFA cuts stun Hamline students.” This article shed a light on a terrible situation at Hamline University. It is criminal that temporary “interim” administrators eliminated the budget of Hamline’s nationally known literary journal Water~Stone, cut funding for the master of fine arts in creative writing’s program coordinator position and plan to terminate Hamline’s nationally renowned MFA in creative writing program.

I am an alum of Hamline’s creative writing program. This was a program that changed my life, propelling me into a literary career here in Minnesota. Just this last year I received a major grant for my writing from the Minnesota State Arts Board, performed my poetry at the Ordway and had one of my poems arranged for choral performance. Over the years I have published a number of books, and founded and run many literary reading series. None of these milestones would have happened had I not been a student at Hamline’s MFA program. Our future literary creators deserve to have the opportunities that I and my peers had.

I do not understand these decisions. The award-winning journal Water~Stone is one of the most respected journals in the country, and the production of this journal by Hamline students has given them significant experiences that led many into literary careers. As a longtime curator of multiple reading series, I have noted that the vast majority of my readers who have published books and my engaged audience members were alumni of the Hamline program. Hamline’s MFA program is a beating heart in our region’s literary life.

It has been said that the reason for these decisions is a drop in enrollment. This seems disingenuous, as all academic departments across the country had drops in enrollment right after the COVID crisis when Hamline instigated a program review. On top of that, numbers of new students in the past year-and-a-half show an increase in target marks set by the interim provost that have both been met or exceeded each term.

So why are Hamline leaders doing this? Do they not care for the pursuit of knowledge? Do they not care about providing space to give many different voices a platform to be heard? Do they not care about supporting creativity and the making of art? Do they not care about the vitality of the community Hamline is a part of? Or how about the most pecuniary issue of all, do they not care about making money? Nationwide, MFAs in creative writing are extremely popular and there is a huge market for such degrees.

This program, through its journal Water~Stone and the many students who went on to become published authors, faculty, editors and literary leaders have made Hamline a name respected nationwide. These terrible decisions by “interim” administrators need to be halted forthwith and left to the permanent Hamline leadership that will soon start their jobs. To eliminate this history and end this notable legacy now will do harm to the literary life of our community and to the country.

Michael Moore, St. Paul

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It really says something about a culture when a McDonald’s storefront can’t exist for longer than 20 years without a complete redesign, so I guess I’m not surprised Hamline’s leadership wants to “sunset” the oldest creative writing program in the state. Much like the recent demolition of the Hamline-Midway library, it is clear that there’s an unfounded fear in this country of hanging onto history, especially when it relates to the arts. Without Hamline’s offering of evening classes for writers who work, the remaining graduate programs are, in the case of the University of St. Thomas, either offered as master of arts degrees (which are fewer credits than an MFA and thus qualify graduates for fewer job opportunities) or, in the case of the University of Minnesota, extremely selective (at the time of my applying for the U’s program, the school only accepted two students a year, who would have to teach undergraduate classes full-time for funding). Losing this program will directly correlate to fewer writers in Minnesota receiving high-quality training, which in turn will result in fewer Minnesota authors entering the professional writing world. Clearly, though, this is of little concern to Hamline’s board and interim president, as they have fallen for one of the fatal flaws of American leadership: Out with the old and in with the new.

Anna Molenaar, St. Paul

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On Wednesday we had a wonderful article by D.J. Tice (“Two literary giants demonstrated what can’t happen here, and what can” March 26). As we approach the 100th anniversary of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “The Great Gatsby,” Hamline University has announced that they are considering dropping the Creative Writing MFA program. That is sad.

Norman Holen, Minneapolis

A March 23 article, “People ‘falling through the cracks’ ” is generally well written and accurate, but has two flaws. The first is the misguided analogy, attributed in the article to state Sen. Ron Latz (but Latz is hardly the first to use it), of a mental health “system” with “cracks” some people fall through. A better analogy would be to think of people falling from the sky, sans parachutes, whose only chance is to grab a rope strung across a canyon, as comic-book heroes might. We closed our state hospitals years ago based on the lie that services would be provided in the community, and today a high percentage of folks with serious mental illness are either in prison or homeless.

The second flaw is the predictable focus on involuntary treatment. Involuntary treatment is always controversial because it involves abridging someone’s rights. And it’s expensive. But it is also irrelevant because, as the article points out, there aren’t enough treatment slots to confine people to anyway. We never hear about involuntary treatment for other diseases, e.g., cancer, because we expect cancer treatment to be user-friendly.

From 1978 through 2009, I ran Tasks Unlimited, a community mental health program that provided critical support services to hundreds of people diagnosed with schizophrenia and other serious mental illnesses. There were no court orders involved, and our doors weren’t locked; those served could leave at any time, and a few did. But most stayed engaged in our program because we provided user-friendly services that met their needs: high-quality housing, jobs that paid a living wage and strong support by their peers.

We were sometimes criticized for serving people too long, but our reliance on peer support versus staff supervision meant that the public cost of Tasks serving someone with serious mental illness for a year was less than the cost of other models for a month — or a week’s hospitalization. Plus, because they were employed, the people served paid their own room and board and contributed to the minimal staffing costs. And these people, thriving on user-friendly peer support, had illnesses and histories just like those featured in the article.

There are also staff-dependent models that can work, but qualified staff are expensive. Apparently, we would rather keep folks with serious mental illness in prison or homeless.

John K. Trepp, Minneapolis