ECCENTRIC SUCCESS

To the Editors of the CRIMSON:

Is it possible that a college with standards as high and achievements as numerous as those which Bard may well be proud of, be considered a failure: The creativity and imagination, intellectual and artistic, which all visitors immediately notice at Bard, has been mistaken for eccentricity, valuable individual freedom for a "Bohemian" type of strained non-conformity, and insight and initiative for ultra-progressivism and fanaticism.

Bard is not a failure. Financially, its foundations are being shaken, but as an experiment in progressive higher education it has been overwhelmingly successful. It has proved that, as the spirit of American education, the passive attitude toward the routine learning so well known at many of the large universities will never replace the active participation and interest which each student maintain in his own education at Bard and at other small colleges of its type.

It is true, however, that there is a tragedy about Bard--one which its present students, faculty and administration are well aware of. The trend in American higher learning has certainly drifted from freedom to conformity in thought and action. Not only is Bard sorely in need of financial assistance, but it needs the assurance of the academic, professional and business worlds that a Bard graduate will not be handicapped by his "uncommon" education. . . . . Wendy Gluck, Brandels University