Expansion Threatens Sarah Lawrence Ideal

Sarah Lawrence is a classless community for the very rich. Although its tuition is prohibitively high ($2950 a year) and it has few scholarships, the college goes beyond the acknowledged socialism of most educational communities (Harvard, for example, boasts of socialized medicine and room adjustments fees).

For Sarah Lawrence has eliminated status. All faculty members are teachers--there is no professional hierarchy, no political cock-fight for tenure The community recognizes no distinction of age, clubs, or academic discipline--indeed there are no clubs, and "field of concentration" is a definition only loosely applied. And above all, Sarah Lawrence has dispensed with the currency of college life: there are no grades.

Impressed by this sense of perfect equality, writer Harvey Swados commented that "in time Sarah Lawrence girls become so much a part of the community that it is impossible to detect a girl's background. I can no longer tell who is rich and who is poor, or even who is black and who is white." Significantly enough, Swados made this comment with complete case to the reporters, and a group of three Sarah Lawrence girls which included a very light negress.

The intent of the classless community is not homogeneity, but individuality, and a Sarah Lawrence education is ideally focussed on the specific student. Each girl selects her Oxford-like advisor or "don", who has sole authority to counsel her, and criticize her program. Students take three courses a year, and of the 12 courses throughout the four years, all but two follow the unique format devised 30 years ago by Constance Warren, the school's first president.

Teachers give whatever courses they like, (there are over 200) and enrollment for each course may not exceed 15. The class meets once a week for either an hour or 90 minutes. In addition, each student has a bi-weekly half hour "conference" with the course instructor, during which they discuss some topic suggested by the course, and about which the student will write a comprehensive course paper.

Papers are not graded. Instead the student's work is discussed in depth, and at the end of each term the instructor prepares a short report, a critical evaluation of the student's performance.

Experiment with Lectures

In the last few years the college has experimented with lecture courses, but these, too, are small by Harvard standards, averaging about 35 students. Like the seminars, lectures are based as much as possible on the Socratic method of discussion.

Although lectures were conceived initially as a method of keeping pace with an expanding student population, Paul L. Ward, President of Sarah Lawrence since 1960, finds a theoretical justification for them. "For the presentation of some material, a lecture course can be exceedingly exciting, and cover areas which simply cannot be explored in discussion groups," said Ward who was both a student and an instructor at Harvard.

But Ward emphasized the importance of seminars as well. "I think that basic history, as I understand it, is much better taught in sections," Ward explained. "For example, I think a Soc. Sci. 1-type lecture survey course is for the birds.

"But once the student has the basic fundamentals in a field, then I think she might well profit from a lecture course."

Major Transition

Sarah Lawrence's educational policy is unquestionably undergoing a major transition. An expanding student body and its changing relationship to the world outside of Bronxville have made it impossible for the school to remain entirely constant to its original ideals.

A chief fighter for the traditional, "experimental" Sarah Lawrence approach is Maurice S. Friedman, a large, soft, heavy-set philosophy teacher with an unflinching faith in Martin Buber. Friedman was delighted to discuss the educational philosophy which for him has become almost a religion.

As he spoke we scanned his dimly lit fourth floor conference room. Perhaps at one time the room was part of an attic, dusty, stale, and dead. But as Friedman has decorated it, the room is almost oppressive in its humanity. At odd corners of the room are numerous animals; each comes as a surprise. Swinging from the sloppy bookshelf is a toy monkey. A pink trojan horse and grey kitten sit on the desk. Also on the desk stands a willow plant, to which is attached a single large, yellow bee. And a gaint green cotton frog is perched on the magazine table.

"I was fleeing from the impersonality and bureaucracy of a great state university." Thus Friedman explained his reasons for coming to Sarah Lawrence from Ohio State University. Just as surely Friedman was reacting against his undergraduate years at Harvard. He described going to classes "scribbling notes furiously, and listening to nazal lectures." In sum, "I learned discipline there, but missed any dialogue at Harvard."

Frustrated as a teacher at Ohio State, Friedman began a careful study of the unique educational policy being pioneered at Sarah Lawrence. Convinced, he came East and joined the Sarah Lawrence faculty in 1951.

Four branches of the "experimental" system impressed Friedman particularly. He listed them. (1) "A teacher giving a course of his own choice and divising makes it more meaningful for himself and for his students;" (2) "I was tired of grades, and besides, I don't believe in them;" (3) "I liked the 'Conference' system;" and (4) "I believe in education through an exchange of ideas."

But the pure Sarah Lawrence system exists no more. Friedman pointed to the areas of change. In the last decade the student body has increased from 370 to 540. The faculty, too, has been expanded, though not proportionately. With size has come impersonality and a diminished dedication to the original "experimental" plan.

The First Examinations

With the introduction of lecture courses have come the first examinations in the school's history. Furthermore, due to the expanded student body, the most popular classes are invariably oversubscribed. As a result, many students wind up taking their fourth and fifth choice courses.

The key to Sarah Lawrence's personality remains the individual students and teachers; and in them seems to lie the real shift. For as Friedman noted, most students who come to Sarah Lawrence might just as easily have gone to Radcliffe or Barnard. More and more the Sarah Lawrence girl could pass for an "eighth sister," though not yet an identical twin.

By deciding what courses will be given and how, teachers share responsibility for the school's tone. Friedman's classes stress "dialogue" and "interaction of teacher and student"--terms which he savoured continually while discussing Buber's edu-educational theory. But another, more traditional teacher, might make his course as conventional as he chose. And more and more, as the faculty expands, the college acquires the latter breed.

Francis Randall is such a one. "A. B., Amherst College. M.A., Ph.D. Columbia University. Taught at Amherst College, 1956-59; Columbia University and Barnard College, 1959-1961. Sarah Lawrence College, 1961--." So the college Catalogue describes him.

Asked why he came to Sarah Lawrence, Randall easily replied "they made me such a good offer that I couldn't refuse it." Before accepting, Randall said, he knew little about the college or its educational philosophy.

Then we asked Randall to contrast teaching at Sarah Lawrence with teaching at Columbia or Barnard. He was puzzled. To him the student body seems about the same as that of any Ivy school. And the educational system is, to him, pretty conventional. The reason for this view, as one girl pointed out later, is perfectly simple. In coming to Sarah Lawrence from Columbia, Randall did not change his style of teaching.

We audited his class, "The Soviet Union and World Communism." It meets in a bright square room which has no furniture other than a large round table surrounded by chairs. There were 14 chairs at the table and only nine students. The two chairs on either side of Randall were vacant, giving the class a strained formality. After hearing the popular stories about the school's artistic sloppiness, it was surprising to see the girls neatly dressed. Many wore sweaters, mostly shetland. In front of each girl lay an orderly loose leaf notebook, into which the girls made frequent entries. Several girls kept outline notes.

Randall's style is challenging and inventive; but it leaves little room for dialogue. He was describing the growth of communist parties in Europe. Colorfully, he would illustrate each point with a dramatic example. In England, for instance: "Imagine that you are a communist agent sent to England in 1918 to set up a communist party. You have no previous contacts. Where do you look for help?" The students are somewhat baffled, not by the question, but by the approach. The answer is perfectly simple, but who will bother to give it? It is too simple to offer a challenge, too straightforward to offer a reward. In a class based on discussion, reward comes in a different form than in a class based on exams. To the Sarah Lawrence girl excitement comes in the form of an original idea finally conceived, not in the image of a multiple-choice test properly answered.

Finally someone answers Randall's question (trade unions and the Socialist party) and he goes on. But his style is consistent. "Who would be more likely to join the Communist party in the United States, displaced Negro workers or consistently employed Ladies Garment Workers?" "In Boston who would be more likely to oppose the government, an Irish fireman or a German grocer? Why?"

Often the questions bring no response. "What European nation besides England had a Socialist party with little Marxist influence?" Then, after the silence, "the answer may seem too obvious," another silence. Then, finally, "Russia herself."

After the class a junior apologized for her classmate's seeming stupidity. "We're just not very familiar with the material," she explained. "He has to help us along." But neither stupidity nor ignorance explain the girl's performance. The problem results directly from Randall's approach.

The point is not, of course, that the girls won't learn from Randall. They will, and have. Rather, Randall's style serves to illustrate the dilemma of a college in transition.

President Ward claims to have heard that the college is changing, but to be unable to detect the change himself. To justify his faith in the school's future, Ward listed several outstanding new teachers. Atop the list was Francis Randall.

President Ward appears not to understand the spirit of the school as his predessesors conceived it. Of course, he has inherited the conflicting demands of theory and necessity, and to some extent the inconsistancies in his argument are excusable. But his conclusions inevitably take the school farther away from its stated ideals.

For example, he says he wants to preserve the traditional image of Sarah Lawrence as a progressive school. At least in part, he maintains, this will assure that "we will get girls who will best profit from our educational system" He calls this process "self-selecting". For this reason he claims to have fought down the trustees's attempt to change the College Catalogue. Yet during Ward's presidency the student body has increased by more than 100 girls, lecture courses have been added, and examinations have been introduced in the lecture courses. Furthermore, Ward expects an eventual increase in both the size of the school and the percentage of lecture courses offered.

Conformity Grows

During his regime an increased political conformity has also been evident among the college's faculty. For years Sarah Lawrence, like Harvard, opposed NDEA loans. This year, over vocal student protest, Sarah Lawrence succumbed to the school trustees and accepted the loan. The Chairman of the music department, who has been at Sarah Lawrence since the McCarthy era, assured us that five years ago the faculty would have rejected the NDEA loan without question, even in its revised form.

However, no change has appeared in the ideal of close faculty-student relations.

Intimacy between student and teacher remains a cornerstone of Sarah Lawrence's educational philosophy. As long as any semblance of a dialogue continues to dominate the school's policy, this will be so. Yet the relationship may be artificial, not to say harmful for both man and girl. As Swados commented, "no teacher can avoid feeling like a stuffed peacock after a while with all those girls sitting at his feet, cherishing every word."

Clearly the teacher's role is more than an educational one. When we suggested to Swados that the teacher serves as a male companion, he exclaimed "Companion, Hell! We're men."

There is a legend at Sarah Lawrence that in the 1940's faculty-student marriages become so common that the college stopped hiring unmarried men. Whether true or not, students were hard pressed to name bachelors on the faculty.

In every possible way Sarah Lawrence encourages free thought and social sophistication. Not only is individual freedom the axis of the educational policy; it is the center of Sarah Lawrence social policy as well. Parietals are more liberal than those of any college in the Ivy League. Men may be in women's rooms until mid-night on weeknights, and until 1:30 on the weekend.

As there are no men in the area, girls are at complete liberty to leave the campus and, indeed, since their classes meet only once a week, girls can easily take three or four day weekends.

But the three-day weekend is no substitute for coeducation. Although nearly two-thirds of the girls abandon the campus every week, their social life is, almost to a woman, frustrating.

By and large the freshmen are not as troubled by isolation as are the seniors. But if there is such a thing as the representative Sarah Lawrence girl, she consider herself fully a woman by her senior year. More likely than not, she has had an affair, perhaps in Europe. It has been said that the industrial revolution emancipated woman economically, and that the contraceptive emancipated her sexually. In terms of creativity and morality, at least, the Sarah Lawrence education emanicaptes the woman intellectually. She fancies herself infinitely closer to Doris Lessing and Simone du Beauvoir than to Jackie Kennedy or Francois Sagan.

Several years ago David Boroff described Sarah Lawrence as a college for the rich, the bright and the beautiful." To an extent, perhaps this description could be verified. But as with any generalization, it ignores the individual. And, at Sarah Lawrence, much as transition clouds the mood, the emphasis remains squarely on the individual student