Reform Expos

WITH THE CANCELLATION of Expository Writing's fiction option last week, Harvard and Radcliffe freshmen lost a valuable opportunity to write fiction in a small-group environment without the competitive pressure of advanced-level ficiton courses.

Richard Marius, director of Expository Writing, said he abolished fiction Expos because he believes many freshmen who take it do not learn how to write an expository essay. Marius's educational objection is understandable in a University that emphasizes expository essay skills, but his actions evidently stemmed from additional, less justifiable reasons. Marius said he would compromise and run the program personally for one more year until one of the fiction teachers protested his decision, reasoning that Marius would have enough power over the program in his position as Expos director. Marius's abrupt action in cancelling the program when he could not head it indicates a bureaucratic pettiness and an unwillingness truly to compromise.

Marius said he abolished the fiction option because he concluded that he and two of his fiction teachers could not agree on how to run the program. But whatever personality conflicts have emerged within the fiction staff, it is the freshmen who will suffer, and is Marius's responsibility to resolve such conflicts.

To replace fiction Expos, Marius has proposed a new experimental course, Expository Writing 18, which would require both critical essays about fiction and short fictional vignettes. But Marius's attempted compromise will not work, because it cannot accomodate the desires of many freshmen to write longer, more developed fiction under careful guidance. Marius's action removes half of the available number of fiction courses at the University, and will increase the pressure on the already over-subscribed advanced fiction courses.

Marius's proposal also fails to deal with the broader problems in the Expository Writing program as a whole. By most accounts, other Expos courses do not train students to write skillful expository prose either, and certainly do not motivate already-competent essay-writers to improve their prose, a merit fiction teachers claim for the fiction options. Marius would do well to concentrate his reforming energies on these far more serious drawbacks to the program, so that Harvard's required Expository Writing course will begin to turn out accomplished, or at the very least, competent, writers, as it is supposed to.