University of Virginia Library

Students Throughout Nation Favor Free University

Supplementary Courses Sought To Dispel Curriculum Criticism

By Mike Russell
Cavalier Daily Staff Writer

Curriculum criticisms by college students
across the nation have lead to a movement
among the more liberal student organizations
to replace or supplement present college degree
programs.

Free or experimental universities have
grown out of this movement. The concept
behind these universities is that any student
attending college should have the opportunity
to obtain the broadest possible education.

To fill the intellectual void at the
University, a committee of students has formed
in order to facilitate an experimental university
here. Their hopes are to allow the students a

greater opportunity for a more liberal
education. In order to plan the courses and
organization of the experimental university, a
meeting will be held tonight at 9 in the South
Meeting Room of Newcomb Hall for all
interested students and faculty. Allan Potter, a
member of the National Student Association,
will be present to offer some guidelines in the
formation of a free university.

Students throughout the nation have for
sometime have expressed the feeling, and this
holds especially true for the larger universities
where IBM cards and large classes are the order
of the day, they have become estranged from the
educational process due to the depersonalized
atmosphere fostered by the size of the
university. In early 1965, students from a
number of colleges expressed their
dissatisfaction.

"Someone said that she felt her presence at
college irrelevant.... She felt no significant role
in the common educational enterprise; was a
block which could be replaced by another
block. She could pursue her self-satisfactions,
some creative, some trivial, but what place had
she in the education of other students, not to
speak of the faculty, and what place had they in
hers? It became quite clear that what IBM cards
symbolized at Berkeley and what was
complained about here was not simply
mechanized, impersonal administrative
treatment; rather the students were expressing
their sense of isolation, their reduction to less
than human beings, in the main task - education
- to which the college is theoretically devoted.
Some had discovered in the civil rights
movement, in community projects.... what
working with groups toward a common purpose
could mean, what mutual interdependence
could be, and how work and study or job could
be fused. Now they had to recognize that the
classroom was no such community, that it was
structured like a wheel, all of whose spokes
were attached to the professional hub, but
wholly isolated from one another.... As
someone said, 'we never do anything important
together.' "

The sense of isolation has spread throughout
the college communities and free universities
have been designed to fill the void left by
impersonal education.

Complaints have been against more than the
mere alienation of the system from the student
life. College students feel that the curriculum
offers no challenge, no motivation that do more
than rote learning, and offered no emphasis on
individual independence. Students are forced to
"play a game with the professor, to psych him
out on his exams in order to make high grades."
Charges of universities being more interested in
good business than in good education have also
been made.

Curriculum devoted to straight lecture in
which the professor provides all the
information and the student none have the
ability, the students feel, to, "kill off the
capacity to respond genuinely and individually
to a work of literature, to relate to one's own
experiences and needs of a time."

The free university of Utah centered its
approach on the academic phase of the
University. Its members felt that the institution
offered little in the way of meaningful studies
and therefore supplanted their courses for the
ones being neglected. These interested students
were part on one of the few projects to receive
administrative support from the inception of
the university.

Functional free universities can be instituted
in several ways. The students, if they feel the
need is great enough, can endeavor to totally
substitute their curriculum for the university's.
In the past, unless the administration is
receptive, as in Utah, the free universities have
met with a great deal of disapproval and a large
amount of problems.

More radical students may even go so far,
upon making the decision that their curriculum
is unbearable, as to present the administration
with an ultimatum stating that their demands
are not met, and then withdraw from the
university. Attempts have even been made to
set up free universities from scratch as was done
with the New School in New York.

Problems have been faced by all attempted
free universities so far. Most prominent of these
has been the reaction of administrations to the
ultimatums of more reactionary groups. The
individual groups have had problems in
scheduling classes at convenient times and of
having the enrollment drop, sometimes as much
as fifty per cent, after having initiated their
programs.

The major problem faced by the
experimental universities has been the
tremendous demand of the present system on
the time of the student. In order to maintain
his draft status, the student has had to pursue a
satisfactory schedule of courses to remain in
good standing with the school.

Most of these problems can be satisfactorily
resolved by making the courses offered
interesting enough and by working through the
school's administration.

The third method of organizing a free
university, and possibly the easiest to
implement, is the plan that the University's
committee has decided to adopt. Instead of
making immediate demands for curriculum
changes, and presenting ultimatums to the
administration, the committee has decided to
begin by adding supplementary courses to the
curriculum allowing students the opportunity
for a broader education.

As time passes, the hope of the committee is
that antiquated courses will be replaced by
courses from the experimental university or
that credit will be extended to some of the
better seminars.

Seminars, as planned, would run from six to
eight weeks and would involve from twelve to
fifteen students each. It is hoped that the
program will draw those students who will be
motivated to learn, rather than pressured to do
so, as in the present system.

Course subjects can run from topics on
contemporary politics to black culture to art
and music, depending on the interests of the
students involved.

The Curriculum Evaluation Committee has
already taken steps that could prove
instrumental in the accreditation of the
experimental university. By allowing students
to take places on the actual departmental
committees, some flexibility may be added to
the present curriculum.

Structurally, the University's experimental
university will be after the free university of
North Carolina. The student coordinating
committee, headed by Bruce Wine and staffed
by Kim Hopper, Michael Waitzkin and the
Reverend Howard Gordon, have mt several
times to formulate a projected program to
interested students.

Seminar courses for the free university will
be organized through a central committee,
drawing its material largely from ideas
presented by students and faculty members in
response to tonight's meeting a registration date
will be set up and a seminar schedule will be
published. Hopefully, a full six-week seminar
will be possible between Thanksgiving and
Christmas, and three have been tentatively
planned for the spring.

A number of faculty and administration
members have been contacted in reference to
this plan. Most administrative personnel have
reacted favorably to the preliminary designs,
but are waiting for a more complete program to
come out of the organizational meeting.

Former Dean of the University, B. F. D.
Runk, approved of the concept. Ernest Em.
Dean of Admissions, expressed his approval
also, and a number of faculty members have
thrown their support behind the proposal.
These include Marcus Mallet, Assistant Dean for
Special Scholars; Charles Longino, assistant
professor of sociology and anthropology; David
Welss, associate professor and chairman of the
speech and drama department; and John L.
Sullivan, acting assistant professor of speech.

Other faculty members who have shown an
interest are Michael West, assistant professor of
sociology and anthropology; Joseph Kett,
assistant professor of history; Gary Orfield,
assistant professor of government and foreign
affairs; Gary Lindberg, assistant professor of
English; and David Powell, visiting assistant
professor of government and foreign affairs.

Several men have already agreed to conduct
seminars. They include David Bromley, assistant
professor of sociology and anthropology;
Richard Coughlin, professor and chairman of
the Department of Sociology and
Anthropology; and Rod Collins, director of the
University's Radio and Television Center.

Proposed courses include civil
disobedience, the generation gap, Vietnam,
development of pop music, educational
television and history of the mass media. These
ideas are in no way meant to limit the
possibilities but are merely suggestions which
have been forwarded to the coordinating
committee.