SOUR BRIAR

To the Editors of the CRIMSON:

In protestation against the views you present in regard to "Sweet Briar's package program" of "Study by the Seine," may we say that secondhand evaluation is hardly sufficiency for condemnation. Many of the implications in your editorial of January 11, 1955, strike us, five former members of the Junior Year Program, as eminently unfair.

Your primary criticism, that Sweet Briar's services in the fields of "advice and family living" and academic activities are useless and restraining and therefore an unnecessary expense, would scarcely some valid to the mature mind familiar with the situation in Franco.

The phrase "Sweet Briar College's package program" is inaccurate and misleading. The Sweet Briar Junior Year in Franco is an organization under the auspices of Sweet Briar College: however, it is directed by Dr. Joseph E. Barker independently of the college's academic program. Furthermore, the junior Year program is not packaged. Any student may be excused from the "hustling down to Tours" with authorization from the chairman of the French Department at the college or university. In other words, if Harvard's "well-prepared students" knew French well enough "in the first place" to forego this delightful period in a famed center of international education situated in the celebrated chateau district, they could secure permission to do so.

To you it may seem "reasonable that students specially chosen to study in France are mature enough to find their own places to live, and to consult University officials about their study programs." Frankly, the question is not one of maturity. If you had fifty-six hours in your day, you might possibly locate an official of the University (We doubt it: we know a mature Harvard student who passed an hour aux halles looking for a classroom at 34. Quai du Louvre); but gracious are the French are, it would be impossible that individual consultation be granted each of the thousands of foreign students inundation Paris annually. Courses that the unguided, unsuspecting American students choose are rarely suitable, because the French university system is aimed at French students who have been trained specially for it and who remain in it for several years, rather than at "Harvard language concentrators" spending a winter in Paris. Intimate knowledge of this system and of particular curricula, not to be acquired in a few weeks, is necessary to select courses which, while conforming to the time limits, would be appropriate for the student and acceptable to his college.

No student is required to take Sweet Briar's own courses, unless so directed by his college or university. These courses are given, for the most part, by professors from the faculties of the University of Paris, the Ecole do Louvre, and the Comedie Francaise. However, the Harvard student, barring objections from Cambridge, is free to specialize as he wishes. So much for the needless imposition of Sweet Briar restraints, "a large academic handicap" which inflicts a foolish financial burden.

"Farming" students out to French families is a farery from shacking them. Living in a French family provides precisely the "Intellectual facilities unavailable in Cambridge." It is in this realm that you over-look the educational character beyond the university circles of a junior year abroad. Students who procure for themselves hotel rooms or apartments in the hallowed Left Bank tradition isolate themselves from all but a few aspects of Parisian life. Social structure and tradition as well as economic conditions exist which render highly improbable that such students be admitted to the closed circles of French family life.

We feel that only the immature student would resent guidance that does nothing if not allow him more free time to develop his independent interests. Newell Bryan, Robecca Faxon, Nelia Gray,   Anne Kliby, and Sue Lawton

While the above letter argues well for Sweet Briar's program, we have received complaints based on first-hand knowledge that participation in the group does negate many educational opportunities of study in France. Students who have returned report that they did have to take six weeks at Tours; but even are if Tours' and participation in Sweet Briar courses are not required, students still have to pay for them, and this fact alone indicates that well-prepared Harvard students must pay for services which they neither need nor want. As we stated, advice is needed, but we repeat our position that a direct arrangement between Harvard and the University of Paris would be more advantageous and less expensive than Sweet Briar's large-scale operation.