The educational experiences that make up the lush college landscape are fast becoming endangered species.

As program cuts, suspensions, reduced faculty numbers and a possible elimination of all athletics loom over students’ heads, we find ourselves fighting against extinctions that threaten the intellectual diversity that we so desperately need.

In the past year alone, cuts and suspensions have touched upon NEXA, Russian, kinesiology, gerontology, California studies, industrial technology, social sciences and clinical lab sciences.

The enrollment numbers of a program like Russian may pale in comparison to more popular departments like business and psychology, but numbers don’t tell the whole story. It’s not just eliminating majors, minors or classes that lose money or don’t attract thousands – but eliminating an outlet in which students can explore unique disciplines or enrich their cookie-cutter majors.

The deterioration of these programs has a snowball effect. Similar to the crescendo of chaos that may accompany the extinction of a plant or animal within an ecosystem, the cutting of programs can have far-reaching effects on society for decades to come.

What happens, for example, when the mass retirement of the baby boomer generation demands a better understanding of aging – an understanding cultivated by programs like gerontology? In a city like San Francisco, where census numbers reveal 45 percent of its citizens speak a language other than English at home, what happens when emphasis is lost on foreign languages at the university level?

In the simplest manifestation, what happens when students are corralled into merged majors and offered a limited selection and scope of electives to choose from?

When this homogenization begins to occur, students are not exposed to the variety that helps them evolve into strong, independent thinkers. They are not supported in goals to devote themselves to majors that are outside of the mainstream, nor are they well-equipped to understand the larger connection that all subjects inevitably share.

Animals and plants succumb to extinction on a daily basis. Individually, their losses do not resonate quickly or loudly enough to turn the world on its ear, but the toll mounts and changes the landscape nonetheless.

To avoid the total extinction of the educational landscape, it is a necessity to address this shift with the same fervor brought to the environmental movement. They are, after all, each a vital part of society’s ecosystem.