SAPPED VIGOR

The tide of future popularity seems to be rushing toward sociology, and the Sociology Department must be prepared to meet it. Aside from reconditioning the elementary course, the Division should survey its own construction with an eye to strengthening itself.

Without question the growth and vigor of the Department has been due primarily to the zeal and forward-looking optimism of two men--Professors Sorokin and Zimmerman. It shows an unhealthy condition in any department to have two men carrying by far the major burden of departmental responsibility and routine, as well as a great teaching load. One senior member has shown for several years an astonishing disregard of the best interests of this department. There can be no excuse whatsoever for a "gang your own way" attitude, with all that it implies about neglect of departmental duties, ragged lecturing, and tutorial quiescence.

Although most of the instructors and assistants are intelligent, trained, and well-selected, there are a few assistants who make such incompetent teachers that they cannot be regarded as anything but parasites, draining the life - blood from sociology. Rather than retain these men, those in charge should reduce the number of section-meetings, since they themselves cannot add to an already overburdened schedule.

The kaleidoscopic use of visiting professors is a grave defect, although occasional appointments may introduce a little leaven because of new viewpoints. These men take some time to become accustomed to their classroom work and can never bear their full share of responsibility. They lend anything but stability to the department and can contribute little in the way of concerted effort in directing the student's course of study. The sooner this transitional stage of using visiting professors extensively runs its course, the sooner a severe handicap to better organization and productivity will be demolished.

The tutorial situation, as well, is discouraging. Understaffing and the pressure of lecture duties have led to a partial breakdown of the system. The result is, of course, that the Sociology concentrator is left with lecturing as the staple of his educational diet.

Until such repair work has been done, largely directed towards bracing departmental discipline, Sociology is greatly handicapped in pulling itself up by its own bootstraps. When such measures have been taken, unhappy concentrators, who have discovered too late their mistake about the "easiness" of this field, will no longer continue to flock to tutoring schools on the Square in numbers which put the other departments to shame.