Two weeks ago, the seven members of the American Indian Studies Advisory Board resigned, protesting the treatment of the program by the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences and the university. They cited the precipitous drop in the number of faculty and the inclusion of American Indian Studies in the new Center for American Intercultural Studies.

In the last two years, American Indian Studies has faced some setbacks. Two faculty members were denied tenure and two others left for other universities.

The college is not completely to blame, however. Recruiting and retaining high quality, diverse faculty is a difficult task in fields where there are few Ph.D.s. Also, universities elsewhere in the country would like to diversify their faculty.

LAS had the additional difficulty of dealing with a shrinking budget; so it is no surprise that the results have been disappointing.

Using the creation of the Center for American Intercultural Studies to create bad publicity for the university, however, was a counterproductive tactic. It served to estrange the American Indian Studies program from the other ethnic studies programs. It also made them seem like the group that had much to gain by joining.

The Center is a combination of African American Studies, U.S. Latino/a Studies, American Indian Studies and Asian Studies. Each program will retain its individual identity and all of its current powers with regard to hiring, promotion, curriculum and evaluation.

Additionally, the Center will allow these small programs to pool resources, form new cooperative ventures and offer a new major in intercultural studies. The complaints of the American Indian Studies program have been that its focus is on sovereignty and nation building — completely different issues than those faced by the other ethnic groups. The notion that American Indians are so different from African Americans, Latinos and Asians so as to render comparison pointless is academically unproductive and false; it seems to imply that other ethnic groups do not have crucial dissimilarities.

Joining the Center does not mean American Indian Studies would have to change its curriculum; it would be better for the program to participate in the Center and have a voice in shaping its policies. A focus on sovereignty does not mean the program itself must be a sovereign entity.

Furthermore, American Indian Studies would lose much by not joining. The Center is a stepping stone to new resources, new faculty, and someday it may have enough faculty to become a department — with the power to grant tenure.

The Advisory Committee should set aside their frustration and work to promote its interests inside the Center.