"I'm definitely happy that they're keeping it adepartment," LaRoche said. "All the students wantthe department to stay as a department."

But LaRoche also said she was "disappointed"that two junior faculty members are leaving thisyear with only one of those positions being fillednext year.

"I don't know who's going to be filling thatposition, but I'm sure there's going to be somefield that's unrepresented," she said. "One ofthose fields is probably going to suffer."

Still, LaRoche said, "there's a lot of strongunity within the department" among undergraduates,graduate students and faculty members.

And Flier also said he thought the organizedopposition to committee status "made a bigimpression on the Faculty of Arts and Sciences.

"The possible threat of it dissolvingimmediately got all of the philologists andlinguists in the campus and in the countryinvolved," Flier said.

"It's really one of the essential disciplines,"Flier said. "All of us, whether we're in thehumanities o