FACULTY APPRAISAL

In a letter to the "Crimson" published yesterday, criticizing the series of concentration articles being currently run in the paper, it was said, "The legitimate appraisal of a department's teachers seems to me to lose much of its value when the students who are called upon to give their opinion are chosen by the department itself, and when some of the men who are thus selected to represent undergraduate, opinion avowedly express their intention to 'boost their tutor.'"

Although there may be some justification for this inference by one unacquainted with the facts, any thorough reading of all the appraisals printed will clearly show that the writer's inference does not conform to the actual case. The "Crimson" has praised and censured alike. After eighteen conferences with men selected by their respective departments it has been our invariable experience to find students open-minded and quite willing to give frank opinions-of anyone in their fields. There is no reason to believe that men selected by their departments should be especially favorable toward their particular faculty, or that the faculty should choose its delegates with any sinister ulterior motive of gaining undeserved good will. Such conceptions hearken back to grade school days of "teacher's pets" and petty favoritism. The number of instructors in a single department is far too large to cull effectively those students who will most agreeably present their cases. And the liberal number of men consulted by the "Crimson," ranging from ten to fifteen, surely ought not to be based or partial on masse.

The "Crimson" appraisal of the teaching staffs may be taken as a fairly accurate register of concentrators' opinions; and although it does not pretend to perfection in every instance, it is certainly not a summary of prejudiced judgments.