So how long before no one in Sackville recognizes this picture? There's always a stink whenever a university chops a department, and this particular downsizing probably won't cause student riots (though read one rant here), but you have to wonder what in hell the administrators are thinking. Germans love Canada, and have been buying up the Atlantic Provinces for the past two or three decades. So there's money for German Studies there. With university recruitment stagnant in the Maritimes, there's a premium on international study programs like MASSIE, which brings in planeloads of Japanese sophomores for English language immersion. Aren't there German sophomores who'd like to spend a term in New Brunswick, among all that forest? Can Mt A ditch a major European language and maintain its MacLeans score against liberal arts colleges like St FX and Acadia that still teach it? And does the Mt A classics department image that laying hands on the German budget will benefit its own program? Because I took classics, and I'll tell you, you can't make heads or tails of the criticism if you don't read German. Douglas [Postscript: They changed their mind. You can minor in German.]