Social Relations 120 Experience Distorted By Rampant Rumours of "Casualty Cases"

Soc Rel 120 is more than a course in interpersonal dynamics and group behavior; it is a happening.

From the first day of class, any student can tell that he is not in the classic, run-of-the-mill lecture course. Walking into a plush, carpeted wombroom on the 13th floor of William James the student is confronted with an oval shaped table with a motherly gap in the center. Seated around the table in ominous silence are his twenty-odd classmates and an unidentified section leader.

The mystery compounds itself when he finds one of the walls is a gigantic one-way mirror. On the other side of it, unseen in the adjacent room, a staff of graduate and undergraduate observers wait in anticipation, their tape recorders ready for his first words, their trained minds poised to categorize his stumbling first-thoughts.

He sits down to await instruction. After a few minutes the section leader gives a brief outline of the course, says when the first paper is due and falls silent. Five, sometimes even ten minutes, pass before the silence is broken. Finally, some brave soul takes the first step toward forming the norms for the group's behavior: "My name is Tom." The machinery of anxiety has launched the group into a series of tense analytic and soul-searching sessions which will leave them unsatisfied, but feeling that they have learned an enormous amount about themselves and interpersonal dynamics.

Few students have taken the course and come out untouched by the unique experience. Many, however, tend to give a distorted picture when describing it, probably because it is easier to impress a listener with talse of a dangerous and scaring experience than to express the more subtle and less virile sentiment of group unity which evolves over the year. When the Harvard student talks about 120 to a 'Cliffe, he is apt to discuss the many times he "weathered the storms of a vicious, hostile session. You'd better keep away," he adds wisely.

The Myth

Soc Rel 120, more than any other course, is surrounded by an aura of mystery causing fantasies of primitive rites and intimate confessions. There appears something un-kosher about a course without a real teacher to direct the activities of the class, without a conventional structure in which everyone feels secure. It is this lack of authority which allegedly allows the pent-up hostilities of a frustrated University life to escape--devouring the vulnerable innocents.

Most of the many casual rumors circulating about the course are more myth than reality. All applicants have heard stories about the dangers involved in taking the class, so of course they tend to latch on to the incidents of aggression when they arise as proof that their fears were justified. As one section leader in the course commented, "most of the people who are afraid of ending up 'casualties' of Soc Rel 120, are usually those who are most afraid of their own aggressive tendencies; they are more concerned with hurting someone and exposing themselves, than with being hurt."

In an effort to dispel some of the more harmful myths about the course, members of the Social Relations Department involved with 120 attacked the review of the course in the CRIMSON,s Confidential Guide as unfortunate, inaccurate, irresponsible and possibly detrimental to the course.

The Confii Guide offers this choice caveat as a description: "Few students seek academic credit for sadism, but for those who do, there is always Soc Rel 120."

Thomas J. Cottle, lecturer on Social Relations, said that the most common advice given about Soc Rel 120 is "Don't take that course; people get mutilated there." Cottle denied the charge, saying that in his experience he knew of no real "casualties." Most of the people who are attacked, he continued, learn something fundamental about themselves, a few even change substantially over the year. Most sections, Cottle said, confront the hostility inflicted on the class scapegoat, and try to analyze its origins.

There are brakes built into the course which keep discussions from becoming too intense: the room-full of observers serves as a constant reminder that what is being said is heard not only by the members of one's own group, but also by professionals in the field and other members of different sections. The non-directive leader occasionally reminds the class of the observers behind the mirror when the discussion becomes too personal. Another brake on the tendency towards hostility is the rivalry among members for group leadership. Often when one leader-candidate is attacking a vulnerable member of the flock, another leader-candidate will come to the rescue of the scapegoat saying: "Now let's examine just why you feel the need to attack Mr. X."

When asked whether he thought it would be possible to screen out vulnerable people who looked as if they might be hurt by a snide remark from a peer, Robert F. Bales, professor of Social Relations, said that it would be technically too costly and time consuming to give each of the students a psychological test to ascertain if they were too fragile to participate. No one has ever been seriously damaged emotionally by the course, Bales added.

Girls Wanted

All the professors involved with directing the course agreed that these myths were harmful in that they might discourage perfectly good people from taking the course. They were especially afraid that it might keep Radcliffe girls from joining.

Last year there weren't enough 'Cliffies to go around; some courses were all male and some had only one girl. Both Cottle and Lane K. Conn, assistant professor of Clinical Psychology, agreed that it was not good to have just one girl in a group of 25 men, and that if that was the case this year, they would urge that a number of girls be put together in one class, leaving other classes with only men. The result of having only one girl in the class, is that the boys compete for her admiration, and the girl is usually more reticent than in a mixed group. "Having a number of girls in the class often relieves many of the homesexual anxieties," Bales added.

Another of the myths, grounded partially in fact, is that an atmosphere of academic confidence is lacking. The Confi Guide article noted that if you wanted everyone on campus to know gritty little things about you, all you had to do was take 120. Bales insisted that every precaution was taken to make sure that no one who was not approved by a section man would have the chance to observe a 120 session. The department is strict in policing this policy, he said. But it is difficult to keep the students from talking with their friends about a course in which they are deeply involved. "We can only remind members of the class that they are not on a closed circuit and that what they say may be repeated out of class. This keeps the course from degenerating into a true confessions session," Bales added.

But in spite of Bales' assurances,