Commencement Tickets

I am a senior who has recently completed the senior survey forms circulated by the Office of Career Services. I am writing to express my anger and disappointment in the College over the arrangement by which Commencement tickets are being effectively "held hostage" until seniors turn in completed surveys.

The College is ambitious to ensure a high survey response rate. Unsatisfactory response rates in earlier years may indicate a need for some mechanism to encourage greater participation. The method which the College has chosen, however, ensures response at the expense of a serious affront to the entire senior class.

Tickets to Commencement are commodities which, even most administrators would agree, all seniors have earned through four years of work here--and which, in most cases, their families have paid dearly for. To predicate the availability of tickets on the completion of the surveys suggests that tickets are some sort of reward which the College may or may not decide to dispense upon us. The arrangement, frankly, cheapens the whole process of graduation. To quote Crimson editor Martha Bridegam '89, the set-up smacks more of the operators of a Soviet department store than of a modern American university.

Apparently the College has not considered that the conditions it has imposed upon the availability of Commencement tickets may bias many respondents against it in the survey. In particular, the questions about "Administration responsiveness to student concerns" and "Faculty attitudes toward students" will be difficult for seniors to approach with an open mind.

According to the Office of Career Services, which is directing all complaints to Dean Jewett's office, this year's arrangement is an "experiment." I hope that many seniors will write to Dean Jewett to convince him that the experiment is a failed one. Wade Roush '89