University of Virginia Library

Structural Changes

Returning students were greeted
with curricular and structural
changes, as well as warnings, at
many schools. Whether they were
intended as appeasing gestures or in
sincere recognition of the students
to relevant learning and self-determination
is a matter for conjecture.

Black students programs have
burgeoned across the U.S., paralleling
an increase in the number of
blacks attending colleges. Dartmouth,
a school that has graduated
fewer than 150 blacks in its
200-year history, has 90 blacks in a
freshman class of 855.

Other eastern colleges have
taken similar steps. Brown University
has increased the number of
blacks in its freshman class from
eight in 1966 to 77 currently;
Wesleyan, from 30 to 51; Yale,
from 31 to 96; and Harvard, from
40 to 95. Harvard also recently
announced it had established a
Department of Afro American
Studies, offering 15 courses, including
one on the "black revolution."
The Ivy League institution has
appointed a 35-member committee
to prepare proposals for structural
change based on a report on last
year's disorders.

For Stanford's 6,000 returning
students, new educational reforms
meant an end to most graduation
requirements, including those in
foreign languages. Individual departments
have been asked to
design options to permit a student
to take at least one-half of his work
outside the requirements of his
major. The number of freshman
seminars conducted by senior faculty
members has been expanded so
that 369 of 1,400 freshmen are in
the seminars.