The very idea of discussing the foreign-language requirement for graduate degrees in English is enough to drive faculty members back to their offices to grade first-year composition papers. How can they bear to hear yet again the responsible and powerful arguments in favor of the requirement--and the practical arguments against it? If they have directed graduate programs, they have painful memories of struggling to get students through a requirement that many of them see as pointless, although many of them see it as necessary. Enough, they want to say. They have heard all the opinions, seen all the postures. They have repeatedly voted to maintain the requirement. Leave it alone. But they cannot let go of it. Their inability to enforce the requirement rigorously is a wound on most of their graduate programs that refuses to heal, an itch that some of their students keep scratching beneath the bandage of their good intentions. In this article, the author proposes that colleges should define what foreign-language proficiency entails, enforce it with consistency and integrity, and require it for admission to graduate study.