Once More With Feeling

When former Dean McGeorge Bundy presented the Faculty with his proposed tutorial legislation back in 1958, he warned his audience not to "underestimate the value of the tutorial program." His audience apparently paid scant attention, because last week Glen W. Bowersock '57, associate dean of the Faculty on undergraduate education, found himself before the Faculty repeating the same exhortation to what he hopes will prove a more attentive group.

Bowersock submitted his tutorial reforms to the Faculty last Tuesday for a vote, but Faculty members agreed not to vote to allow for more discussion. (In facultese this is called "laying over.")

The tutorial legislation--which would require every Faculty member to teach a minimum of one tutorial a term--makes "realistic" demands on the Faculty, Bowersock said on Tuesday. "The amount of time professors believe they will have to spend on tutorials is overdone," Bowersock added.

Some professors remained skeptical. Robert Nozick, professor of Philosophy, told the Faculty Tuesday that he believed Bowersock's reforms, combined with the demands of the Core Curriculum next year, would place "too heavy a burden" on professors. He asked his colleagues to oppose the legislation.

But most Faculty members came to Bowersock's defense. Wallace T. MaCaffrey, professor of History, supported the reforms, acknowledging that in the past professors have allotted minimal time to tutorial instruction, "Students must have the impression that a professor's capacity to teach tutorial vanishes with the onset of middle age," he added.

Summing up in words reminiscent of Bundy's caveat 21 years earlier, Bowersock stated, "It's not my style to make threats, but neither are we willing to pass legislation that won't be enforced."