By Ella Prieto, Editor-in-Chief
On April 1, Gettysburg College President Bob Iuliano announced in a campus-wide email that the English Department will be replaced by a state-of-the-art Artificial Intelligence (AI) Data Center. While all of Breidenbaugh Hall is to be demolished to create space for this new center, the other departments residing there will be moved to different academic buildings. The English Department was identified as “costly” and “not enhancing the student experience enough”, leading to its demise.
“After extensive review of departmental performance metrics, student engagement data and long-term institutional priorities, we have determined that the English Department no longer delivers sufficient value to the Gettysburg experience,” Iuliano wrote in the email.
The AI Data Center, tentatively named the Institute for Computational Excellence, will occupy the footprint currently held by Breidenbaugh and is expected to house over 400 high-performance servers, a machine learning research hub and what the email described as “an immersive AI interaction lounge where students can engage with large language models in a dynamic, forward-thinking environment.”
The other departments currently residing in Breidenbaugh Hall, such as the new Communication Studies major and East Asian Studies, will be relocated to available spaces across campus. East Asian Studies, the email noted, will be moved to a repurposed storage room in the basement of Weidensall Hall, described in the facilities plan as “cozy and historically resonant.” Additionally, the Writing Center will be absorbed into the Computer Science Department, where student papers will henceforth be submitted to an AI grading algorithm trained on a dataset of previous A-minus essays.
Faculty reaction was swift. English Department Chair Chris D’Addario released a three-page statement written entirely in Shakespearean iambic pentameter, calling the decision “a philistine act of institutional vandalism.” Several professors announced they would be holding emergency office hours in the Breidenbaugh hallway for as long as the building stands.
Students appeared more divided. “Honestly, I’ve been using AI to write my papers anyway,” admitted one junior English major, who then paused, appeared to reflect on what he had just said and walked away without further comment.
President Iuliano concluded his email by thanking the English faculty for their years of service and noting that several of them may be eligible for retraining as “AI prompt engineers.” A transition workshop, titled From Shakespeare to Syntax: Your Future in Tech, has been scheduled for mid-April in the Pennsylvania Hall Lyceum.
Breidenbaugh Hall is expected to begin demolition over the summer.
