My friend Andrea is a high-school senior in the middle of that arduous struggle known as the college application process. She had intended to apply to Brandeis, but two weeks ago she crossed this university off her list. After reading the Justice's coverage of Dean of Arts and Sciences Adam Jaffe's proposals to eliminate the teaching of Ancient Greek and eventually phase the classical studies department out of existence, Andrea was rather let down by Brandeis. She has studied Latin and Ancient Greek and will be a classics major wherever she ends up going, but it definitely won't be Brandeis.Prof. Ana Olga Koloski-Ostrow, the chair of the classical studies department, was distressed when I told her about my friend's recent decision. This was not surprising to hear-Professor Koloski-Ostrow's department is essentially operating under duress now. Yet she would urge my friend, and any other prospective students turned off by the threatened elimination of the classical studies department, to apply to Brandeis anyway as an act of support for a department in need of fresh blood. However, Andrea told me that even if Jaffe's plan to make dead the study of dead languages fails, the attitude shown toward instructing students in classics is reason enough to shun this university.

In fact, Andrea received a Blue Ribbon application package from Brandeis last week. Having seen the Justice's article and editorial about Jaffe's proposal, she literally threw the application in the garbage. The dean claims to give significant credence to students' academic interests when proposing curricular reforms, but apparently he does not contemplate the likelihood that while certain subjects-including classical studies-have become less popular over the years, there are still prospective students out there that want to follow in the work of today's classical scholars.

"I certainly would expect that there are some students for which a Brandeis without [Ancient] Greek is less attractive," Jaffe told me yesterday. But in eliminating programs and departments that he recognizes future students would enroll in, Jaffe is not upholding the students' academic interest, he is undermining it. Because of Jaffe, a prospective student's Blue Ribbon application is not being filled out and mailed back to Waltham, it is collecting grime and mold in a New York City landfill.

And it is worth reiterating what many opposed to Jaffe's initiative have already shouted to the campus: The material studied in the classical studies department is the foundation of Western civilization. Everything we hold sacred to our ways of life-modern languages, literature, studies of the humanities and sciences-all comes from two Mediterranean peninsulas. Jaffe may be right to argue for more course offerings where student demand is on the rise (economics, biology and chemistry), but he can't fight three millennia of human history.

At the faculty meeting last Thursday, Jaffe's presentation included the statement: "We remain committed to liberal arts education." But as the Justice's recent editorial wrote and Professor Koloski-Ostrow and Andrea reminded me last weekend, classical languages and literature are the basis of everything studied in a liberal arts environment. Hopefully, Jaffe will eventually realize, as many of us have already, that no new business and economics professors or any trendy, diversity-themed courses can replace the foundation of Western society.

Andrea told me she originally thought to apply to Brandeis after reading the classical studies offerings in the bulletin. Though she saw the department is tiny compared to others, she was excited by what she read: a small, dedicated group of professors teaching about antiquity in exciting ways. But now, she's just disappointed with this university.

Professor Koloski-Ostrow also said in our e-mail conversation that the best way right now for students to preserve, even defend the classical studies department is to enroll in courses. Studying classics isn't entirely ancient languages and untranslated epics, it's about the greatest artistic, dramatic, literary, political and scientific achievements in human history (and many courses are conducted in modern English). I signed up for Professor Koloski-Ostrow's course "Pompeii: Life in the Shadow of Vesuvius." She said it was "one bright spot in all of this grim darkness on the horizon." My reason for enrolling in this class was largely out of interest in its subject, but also to take a defiant stand against efforts to move Brandeis' curriculum away from its liberal-arts tradition.

Jaffe, in formulating most of his initiatives, often measures Brandeis against its peer institutions. Of course, many of them have more financial resources than we, but eliminating the essence of the liberal arts would lower our stature among competing institutions. "If, at the end of the day, we conclude that my proposals on balance do more harm than good," Jaffe told me, "then we will certainly not pursue them." One can only hope.