Serving Storrs Since 1896
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(Etfmtrrttrut Sailu Glamjms Serving Storrs Since 1896 Vol., LXX No. 1 STORRS. CONNECTICUT Monday, September 11, 1972 Monday, September 11, 1972 ? (dunurrtirut Sattg (UamjWH crisis in education Editor-in-Chief Lincoln Mil/stein Editor's note: Reprinted from believe that "those who fail to we're wrong now, even if we the September 22, 1971 edition study history are destined to were once right. The plain fact of the matter is Managing Editor Business Manager of the Daily Campus. relive it." I am thoroughly satisfied that, having read of the that we cannot, by the nature of Alan Reisner Donald Waggaman by Homer D. Babbidge, Jr. errors of others, I have myself our resources, our settings and escaped a few. our talents, be all things to all young men and women. We That there is a crisis in Second, we have followed must acknowledge that many of American Higher Education what I call a full-tank approach them want ana need learning today, no one doubts. The to formal learning. We have tried experiences that we cannot young lack confidence in higher to fill up the intellectual tanks constructive dialogue realistically afford them. E ven in education, essentially because of the young to capacity, prior the case of young men and they do not find it — in its to their journey through life, In a university fast, approaching enormity there is women of great intellectual conventional forms — the kind and have hoped that there'd be promise and prupose, we cannot always a need for channels of mass communication. of experience appropriate to enough fuel to last for the trip. provide for all their wants. Consistent with this need is the purpose for publishing a their felt needs. In addition, the But the trip through life has Oliver Wendell Holmes left daily newspaper. adult world at large is changed. And the refueling stops Harvard in his senior year to join As the sole daily newspaper on campus, the disenchanted with the higher on the way are becoming education establishment because increasingly important. the Massachusetts 20th Connecticut Daily Campus intends to justify its existence Volunteers, saying that "it is it simply has not yielded the My thesis is that if these required of a man that he should by: informing the community about news concerning results that society at large had mistakes are in fact at the root share the passion and action of UConn; protecting the interest of the university through hoped for. of public and student his time at peril of being judged editorial comment; provioing a source for information Having discovered that a disenchantment: that some, at not to have lived." regarding recreational, social as well as cultural activities; conventional college education least, of that disenchantment is warranted. What I'm saying is that and by initiating leadership to generate student response served some highly talented and highly motivated young people, What it seems to me is now academic education claims too to pertinent issues. and served them exceedingly called for is a reappraisal of the large a share of the lives of too We hope you join this effort to keep the university a well, we have leaped to the formal educational and other many young people at a time in community where constructive dialogue will not be lost. unwarranted conclusion that the learning needs of people at their lives when exposure to the same experience would serve all various stages of their lives. What larger world — and its rich, young people equally well, and we need to do is to figure out informal learning experiences, is read us, write us for all time. And to this end we what part of their learning needs what they most crave — and (I have applied unconscionable can be satisfied through formal happen to believe) many of This is an important year for the University of pressures on our children to education, at what time in their •hem most need. Connecticut. follow a path and a pace that lives, and in what sequence. By the same token, formal You probably didn't realize this as you climbed the simply could not be universally There are those who contend education claims too little of the steps of Shipee Hall with all your belongings on your back appropriate to all. that adolescence is an invention ■lives of most of those people of the 19th century, and that in now locked into the world of last week. And you probably didn't think much about it We have made at least two mistakes, really. catering to it. we have succeeded actions and passion. while trying to figure out where you were going to park First, we have assumed that only in delaying the process of I have no difficulty in your car or where you were going to scrape up your first the best way to learn about life maturation and the attainment imagining a day when we will meal last Tuesday. is from the recorded experiences of adulthood. But whether we not accept some students unless But things have changed over the summer. And there of others, by providing teaching invented it or not, it's there. and until they've had, not a Among other things Junior Year Abroad, but a year are going to be a lot more changes during this school year. in a protected setting: In fact, that is true only for some young adolescence is a period, of great in the real world. I have no Number One: the Board of Trustees composition has difficulty in imagining the day people. We have forgotten curiosity about life, and we in when we'll welcome students of changed. The expired terms of Walter Marcus and William Melville's basically reassuring formal education have tried to Benton were filled by Charles Stroh and Walter Kozloski words: "A whaling ship was my take advantage of that fact. But any age, from any walk of life, and give them some credit, at thus giving Gov. Thomas Meskill a clear majority for the Yale College and my Harvard I'm afraid we're gulty of concluding that our youth - least, for their years in the first time since he took office in 1970. This has already yard." In a sense, we have confused centered and youth - oriented college of hard knocks. had far-reaching effects on the operation of the University. learning and education. In cmapuses, with all their books The way the University does business for example. The and words, will in fact satisfy reality learning is a process that Dr. Homer D. Babbidge was the curiosity of all the young. Trustees followed an Etherington Commission (The goes on everywhere, while the past UConn president. The efforts of some of them to Governor's Commission on Services and Expenditures) education is the imposition on He is now Master of Timothy reshape the campus in the image recommendation that the bookstore be put lut to bid to that process of discipline and Dwight College at Yale purpose. I am a sometime private operators. This summer they formally contracted of the real world should give us a University. historian, and I therefore must clue that - for many of them — the Follett Corp. to run the bookstore beginning in October, 1972. It is believed that the Trustees will also soon put out to bid the Dining Hall and Food Services to private companies, thus threatening the jobs of present state an uncertain future employees. The Trustees' warm embrace of many of the Etherington Commission's recommendations concerning by Lincoln Millstein the necessity to guard the. Homer D. Babbidge project freedoms of the academic UConn into the realm of the operation of the University of Connecticut is Higher Education is in community. respected state universities. And indicative, we think, of the most significant change - the trouble. For the first time since the late 1950's there is an But what is really happening there is a growing fear that the change in Trustee attitudes toward achieving excellence in overabundance of vacancies for at the onset of this new Board of Trustees may become a education at UConn. students at universities across academic year? mere instrument for the state's Number Two: The University of Connecticut doesn't America. There are a quarter of Students entering and executive to implement policies students continuing at UConn in an effort to further deny the have a President yet. Provost Edward V. Gant is capable a million openings which will will find the university wearing university its sense of autonomy. and qualified in his position as Acting President, but he not be filled this fall semester. The sheepskin has truly become the same face. Structurally, still heads a lame-duck administration. a wall ornament rather than the Storrs has changed little since we The students will have to With the Meskill appointees in control of the Trustees, key to success. Very little we do departed for the summer, and decide for themselves whether the next President could reverse the progressive direction at the University seems to the aura of excitement the state capitol is the proper accompanying the renewal of this school achieved during the Babbidge years. guarantee that we will indeed place for directing policies at make it in the "real" world. ties at school is still with us. But Storrs. Number Three: The Committee for the Re-structuring We come as freshmen often internally, we find the university of Student Governance has been working all summer on with a set of well-defined goals rather insecure about its future, Government intervention into proposals that would make student government more only to find the intransigence of juxtaposing the basic crisis in the minds of learning men is a effective and more powerful.