Alex Wilson's editorial in the 2/22 issue of The Dartmouth should be commended for well articulating the need for student choice and freedom in the face of the College's proposed increases in bureaucracy and social control. His perceptions of the faculty's role in the process, however, I believe are wrong.
Regarding the recent vote in favor of the CSLI's recommendations, he questions "the standing of the faculty to make sweeping pronouncements on the appropriate activities of the students, outside the classroom that is the faculty's sole responsibility." His understanding of the professors' duties, insofar as they are only to convey the material on the syllabus or explicate some tricky assigned text, does not accord with their actual or ideal roles. Rather than acting merely as moderator and resource for a classroom, a professor teaches (or should teach) to increase the intellectual curiosity and personal growth of all her students. An institution like Dartmouth attracts several thousand perspicacious young students to a four-year orgiastic tete-a-tete about theory and praxis, about how the world works, about how to live one's life. This learning happens in the classroom, the lunchroom, and the dorm room. Of course this is all a commonplace. A teacher cannot take the place of a peer, of an administrator, or of a parent. Likewise, though, a teacher is not just a talking head or a verbal set of footnotes. His or her obligation is to the entire individual student, curricular, co-curricular and extra-curricular.
If Mr. Wilson berates the possible fact "that the faculty has never made much of an effort to advocate social alternatives for students," he cannot use this as evidence that they shouldnever have any input about the College experience of their students in the future. Let's not live in history, but learn from it, and progress as well we can.
