THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, June 15, 1996 TAG: 9606150316
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY PHILIP WALZER, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: NORFOLK LENGTH: 79 lines
Old Dominion University's International Writers Center, which brought authors from Eastern Europe and the Caribbean to campus, is closing at the end of the month.
The center has been hit with a fatal one-two punch in funding cutbacks.
Its annual budget, which is under $50,000, had been covered by the university and the Associated Writing Programs, a national literary group.
But late last year, the writing organization, facing federal budget cuts and bookkeeping mix-ups, had to eliminate funding for the center, said Ron Wray, the center's director.
Old Dominion picked up the full cost of the center for the first half of this year, he said, but declined to fund it at all for the 1996-97 year.
Some professors are angry that ODU administrators, who often stress the school's emphasis on international education, aren't supporting the program. The university's strategic plan, approved in 1994, lists as one of eight initiatives that ODU ``will become the premier international university'' in the state.
``I just wish that the university really was honoring its commitment to international studies,'' said Michael P. Pearson, an associate professor of English. ``I don't think that it is by this decision.''
The center's annual budget is $47,000 - $40,000 for Wray's salary and benefits and $7,000 for the center's expenses. Initially, the writing group agreed to cover $20,000 and ODU $27,000.
President James V. Koch said Friday that Janet E. Katz, acting dean of the College of Arts and Letters, ``decided that it was not a high enough priority to take money away from something else. Also it was discouraging that the Associated Writing Programs withdrew its support.''
Koch, who said he had heard little criticism about the decision, said the $27,000 could be used, for instance, to hire a part-time teacher. Katz could not be reached Friday.
Wray, a writer who left Oakland, Calif., in February 1995 to launch the center, said a few schools across the country have expressed interest in taking it over. They include the University of North Carolina at Wilmington, the State University of New York at Albany and California State University at Los Angeles. None has yet made an offer, he said.
The center's major attractions this year were Andrej Blatnik, a Slovenian novelist and screenwriter, and Gordon Rohlehr, a cultural critic from Trinidad. Blatnik was at ODU for three weeks in the fall, and Rohlehr spent three days in February.
``It was an opportunity to bring literature, ideas, concerns from other parts of the world to the community at a relatively low cost,'' Wray said. ``For the amount of money, (the center) bought a lot for the institution.''
The writers spoke at ODU English classes for undergraduates and for graduate students in the new Master's of Fine Arts writing program.
Both also lectured at Norfolk State University.
Blatnik - accompanied by Gustav Murin, a Slovakian writer who came to ODU from the University of Iowa for a couple of days - also spoke to two classes of teenagers at the Governor's School for the Arts. And he gave a reading in Portsmouth.
``People came to that (reading) who had never been to readings before,'' Wray said.
Wray had also recently finished compiling a data base, which he had hoped to post on the Internet, of jobs and scholarships available to writers around the world. Philip D. Raisor, an associate professor of English who helped launch the center, envisioned creating a ``virtual workshop'' on the Internet, in which ODU students could talk to their counterparts worldwide about writing.
``We thought we were in line with the mission of the university,'' Raisor said.
``I think the money argument doesn't make that much sense to me,'' Pearson said. ``For what potential was there, it came very inexpensively.''
The center's $47,000 budget represents less than one-tenth of 1 percent of ODU's annual $178 million budget.
Said Wray: ``It really seemed to me that we'd latched onto something here. Most institutions and their communities would be gifted to have these opportunities for cultural exchange.'' ILLUSTRATION: [Color Photo]
BETH BERGMAN
The Virginian-Pilot
Ron Wray, Director of the ODU International Writers Center by CNB