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Friday, March 1, 1968

THE COLLEGE NEWS

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_ Page Three

 

* Coarse Evaluations?

To the Editor:
According to an article in

last week’s NEWS, some members -

of the faculty and administration
complained of ‘‘slanders’’ in last
semester’s course evaluation,
The course evaluation committee,
too, apparently wished that the

comments had been more
“objective” -- whatever - that
means,

I wrote three of the evaluations
in the booklet, and read the entire
booklet with care, I did not find
anything that could remotely be
described as slanderous, or even
cruel, There were many adverse
criticisms of professors, and not
all of these comments were tact-
ful, However, there is a con-
siderable difference between

- bluntness and slander,

The purpose of the course
evaluation is to guide students
in selecting their courses, The
students are the only people who

regularly < the professors teach;

therefore;they are the ones best>-

equipped to judge the professors’
competence as teachers, at least
in the short run, In these .cir-
‘cumstanees, honesty is far more
important than tact or objectivity.

Let me take an_ illustra-
tion from my own experience,
In the questionnaires for one of
the cqurses I evaluated--one I
had.-not taken--nearly all the stu-

dents _ reported that the in-
structor was incompetent, I
reported this opinion in the

evaluation in terms as blunt as
those used by the respondents, In
honesty and fairness to my fellow
students, I could not have done
otherwise,

If a teacher is incompetent,
the students who may consider tak-
ing his courses in the future
have the right to be so informed,
so that they will not waste their
time, And they should be so in-
formed in clear and explicit terms,
without having to interpret nice--
‘Nellie evasions in which ‘‘incom-
petent’’ becomes _indistinguish-
able from ‘could be improved,’’
Tact is great when you’re tell-

_ Letters to the Editor

ing your roommate that her
new hairdo is unbecoming.
But when you’re trying to help your
fellow students make the best pos-
sible use of their four years
in college, tact and objectivity
just aren’t of the essence,

Even an_ incompetent -in-
structor should not be subjected
to vicious personal attacks, No
human being should, But does
describing someonw as a poor
teacher constitute a vicious per-
sonal attack, or a _ slander?
Are all of us here, students, fac-
ulty, and administration, such
babies that we cannot take crit-
icism except in a sugar-
coated pill?

For $1850, we are entitled
to teachers who have a firm com-
mand of their subject, and

“who are capable of communicat-

ing their knowledge and of
stimulating and challenging the
students’ minds, Anything less is
inexcusable, If the faculty fails
to provide such teaching, and the
administration fails to hire such
teachers, they are cheating us,

In four years here, I have.
had enough incompetent, dull, un-~

inspired, and apathetic teachers
to know that, in many cases, we

" are being cheated, (I have alsohad

several excellent teachers; and,
indeed, the booklet indicates that
students recognize superior teach-
ing and do _ not hesitate to
praise it highly.) A faculty and an

administration which fail to carry _

out their obligations to - their
Students have no_ right to
complain about the tone of the
criticism they get,

Judy Baer °68

Corrective Measures

To the Editor:

I would like to correct two in-
accuracies that appeared in the
NEWS last week, First, I never
said, as is stated on page one,
‘‘Bryn Mawr has to learn to ac-
cept the 8ams as outlined or aban-
don them.” I think that there are
numerous possibilities for chang-
ing the ‘‘Rock basement system”
by which girls return to the halls

 

 

end of february blues
when the sun shines gray on the horizon
(and the leaves look badgered and dead)
when the grades you get are surprisin’
(and the dean says off with your head)

when your boyfriend says he don’t love you

(and the grass in the cloisters won’t smoke)
when even bob dylan won’t save you

(and you’re broke, god knows, you’re broke)

when the aiarm clock goes off in the morning
(and you ain’t got nowhere to go)

when your draft status goes up without warning
(and then you’ve got somewhere to go)

when summer’s a memory of childhood

(and flowers are only a dream)

when hope’s what you once understood

(and your life is out on a beam) ‘

then

it’s time for march!

 

en as ie oe cere Sea BAD AE aa SIR an = eas eg ae eae t

 

“ os : .

eae

and for discussing with the Board
of Directors change in the re-
striction with which the 8ams were
granted, I do not think, however,

that this discussion can be sep- |

arated from the large issue of the
overnight signout, especially the
question of the signout to Haver-
ford. As many of you realize
from the discussion held in the
halls two weeks ago, Self-Gov
is working on a statement about
the overnight signout which it plans
to discuss with the Board at the
meeting in March, Within the next
week or so, the Self-Gov Boards
will have a proposed statement
to submit to the students for dis-
cussion,

Secondly I would like to correct
Dora Chizea on her information
about the boy spending the night
in a dormitory as a result of his
drugged stupor. According to
Dora, the Hall President said
nothing about this incident, A boy
did spend the night in a dormi-
tory, He had not beenusing drugs,
but was drunk, The Hall Presi-
dent dealt with the girl involved in
the incident, and Executive Board
came to the hall in-which this had
occurred to insist to the dormi-
tory as whole that greater re-
sponsibility be taken by each per-
son for the maintenance of the
Men in the Rooms rules,

Drewdie Gilpin

Few Whites

To the Editor;

For those students who know
little of last Wednesday’s vigiland
rally beyond what appeared in the
COLLEGE NEWS, we suggest that
they read the HAVERFORD NEWS
account of those activities, and we
also offer the following com-
mentary.

Not only were the vigil and boy-
cott initiated by the Bryn Mawr-
Haverford Negro Discussion
Group, but participation in these
was almost exclusively on the part
of black students. Ofa total of thir-
ty students who were disturbed
enough about the Orangeburg mur-
ders to give up precious classroom
time and stand outdoors in sub-free~
zing weather, at least 15 were black
students attending Bryn Mawr
(where the toal black enroliment
‘is 24); and additional half dozen
were black Haverford students
who, having led a vigilon their own
campus, came over to support the
protest here; of over 1,000 white
Bryn Mawr undergraduate and
graduate students, we counted less |

than a dozen active protestors,
While it is true that the audience
at the rally was ‘‘predominantly
white’ we think it significant
(and sad) that so many white
students saw fit NOT to come,
Again, there was almost complete
attendance by black Bryn Mawrters
and Haverfordians --not to mention
the support of black students*from
Princeton, Temple and Franklin
and Marshall. :
Those who consider the gunning
down of black students a ‘‘black
problem’’ with which whites need
not be concerned are ignoring a
number of important facts: white
men did the shooting; white offic-
fals condoned the shooting; white
America not only created but also
daily sustains a social system
which breeds hostility, contempt
and hatred. Those who turn their
backs © are

offenders.
To those whocontributed neither

bodily nor monetarily to Wednes-
day’s protest, to those who don’t
care how many black people are
gunned down, we have nothing to
say. ~ But we do want to set the
record straight. The number of
black students on the Bryn Mawr

' campus may be small, but we’re

together, we’re sincere and we
ARE acting on the situation, When
the white students at Bryn Mawr

the black students (and we look
forward to the day), WHEN you
can report ‘predominantly white’
participation in our rallies without
further qualification and we won’t
say a thing--we’ll be too shocked to

. notice!

Patricia Burks ‘71
Valerie Hawkins '69

Out of Concern

To the Editor;

I agree with Patricia Burks and
Valerie Hawkins that I probably
made a journalistic error in not
emphasing the part played by the
Negro students in organizing and
participating in the activities pro-
testing the Orangeburg ‘‘mass-
acre.” Inmy enthusiasm over Don-
aldson’s speech Inot only neglected
to give credit to those, who made
the rally possible but also reported
the speech itself perhaps too sub-
jectively. What I. reported that
Donaldson said is accurate
(compare the Haverford News Ac-
count), But my interest in what
I could do as a ‘‘concerned ‘white

student”? unfortunately superceded:

my intentions to present in “an
accurate journalistic fashion the
‘twho, what, when, why and how’?
in the beginning paragraphs of the
article.

I do resent, however, the impli-
cation in the above letter that my
failure to emphasize the role of

..the- Negro. students in Wednesday’s

events stems from any other reason
than my journalistic error. I had
no intention of slanting the art-
icle out of prejudice to make it
seem as if the white students
were the main innovators and/or
participants in the protests.

Robin Brantley

Response?

To the Editor:

Perhaps I should be writing this
letter to myself, because it is a
sort of expiation of my sins, but
because I think these ’’sins’’ are
rather widespread, I have
addressed it to the OTHER stu-
dents at Bryn Mawr as well, and
hope for some response, ‘‘Re-
sponse’”’ -- that’s the word which
stands for the most important part
of the ‘‘meaningful dialogue’’ bet-
ween students and faculty, between
faculty and administration, between
students and administration, and
above all, AMONG STUDENTS,
which we hear about so often and

Conference...
(Continued from page 1)

ing those which select. the
deans. Harvard. students have
a policy committee which seems
to have more say and respon-
sibility in college policy than
the other schools. They are
often permitted to investigate de-
partments, in order to de-
termine weaknesses in _ the
faculty, curricula, and teaching
methods,

Wellesley has no self-govern-
ment system, but instead has
a committee which consists
of three members of the adminis-
tration, five members of the
faculty and eight students, The

among the worst {committee holds open meetings

every week, and the stystem seems
to work very well,

Barnard students have very
little voice in college policy or
discussion of problems, and as a
whole they seem very inactive,
The students have very little con-
tact with their administration
and do not seem anxious to
establish any, .

Mount Holyoke students want

  

 

tration and to sit on college ©

very rarely think about,

Response was the very element
lacking at the Tuesday meeting of
the student body (or should I say
a VERY small limb of the student
body) with the candidates for off-
ices, ‘Unfortunately, the speeches
were simply too long, and the peo-
ple left at the questioning period
too few to allow for a true inter-
change of ideas, Perhaps Monday’s
session was very different, but the
same problems were certainly pre-
sent,

The first of these problems was
duplifation, The areas covered
by the various councils SHOULD
be well known by the students who
participate in meetings of the type
held Monday and Tuesday nights,
What needs to be discussed is not
a set of general problems, but
the NEW ideas which each specific
candidate has to present, What
is needed is ENTHUSIASM of the
type shown by Faith Greenfield,
and true INTEREST as shown by
all the candidates involved in the
Curriculum Committee,

The second problem was time,
which is not only ‘‘of the essence,”
but part of the very essence -of
Bryn Mawr. ‘‘Ivory Tower’ or
not, there is simply never enough
time in the class hour, in the week,
or in the semester to do all that
needs to be done or even all that
we, as a community or as individ-
uals, desire to do for Bryn Mawr
or for ourselves, Even though
elections come ‘‘but once a year,’’
the mechanics of meeting the can-
didates should be shortened and
made more personal in order to
draw a larger number of students,
Popularization? Yes -- certainly,
but greater involvement of Bryn
Mawr students in curricular and
co-curricular concerns should be
the MOST popular movement on
the campus,

Because ’ of these problems
connected with Tuesday’s meeting
I was one of those who left at
8:30, The duplication annoyed me
and the time was running short,
All of us had reading to do and
papers to write, I made the wrong
choice, How about some RE-
SPONSE from those who DID stay
to talk to the candidates either
night, and from the candidates
themselves? Let’s try to start
a real dialogue!

Judi Hurwitz '71

 

Letters and articles sub-
mitted to the NEWS should
be double spaced and typed

on a 35 space line.

 

 

 

committees, but are largely pre-
vented by the ‘iron rule’
of the administration,

Although the problems of the
Ivy League and the Seven Sisters
did not seem comparable, those
who attended the conference felt
that the discussions were very in-
teresting, and the exchanges
very valuable,

 

INTERESTED???

Enthusiastic support is
needed for a joint Little
Theatre - OLMG Gilbert and
Sullivan operetta in the
spring. Anyone interested in
directing, acting, choreog-
raphy, backstage work or
any other area should send
a note to Lessie Klein or
Cathy Sims in the College
Inn.

 

 

 

‘«Lying in bed would be an al-
together perfect and supreme ex-
perience if only we had a colored
pencil long enough to draw on the

CeO MEE he sey
a i

tee