APPOINTMENTS FOR THE PROMOTIONAL SYSTEM

As further evidence of President Conant's willingness to comply with the suggestions in the "Committee of Eight" Report, the University announced yesterday the appointments of Professor Graustein and Associate Professor Buck as Assistant Deans of Faculty. Enlargement of the function and personnel of this office has long been urged as a step toward alleviating problems of tenure and promotion among the faculty. Instead of being a mere channel through which the departmental recommendations were submitted to the President, the Office should now become a positive force in the system of appointment.

It should be recognized that this action is but a partial cure for the evils now prevalent in the method of faculty promotion. The reorganization of this office is, in fact, but one of the many suggestions the Report made in an effort to remove the feeling among younger instructors that their positions are insecure and that the promotional system is unfair. But such a move as this which helps coordinate department heads and the Administration is nonetheless an important step in this direction.

The chief function of the Office will be to check on departmental recommendations for appointments. Thus much of the favoritism and prejudice that play so large a part in this system at present will be eliminated. The Dean's Office should now be able to collect supplementary information on candidates for promotion. It should be able to obtain unbiased, expert appraisal of their publications. And, perhaps most important of all, it may have the chance of knowing personally the men in various departments. In a word, the Dean's Office should become, as the Committee hoped it would, "a centralized file for personnel records."

Not only, however, should the enlargement of its sphere ensure a more just system of appointment. The university has created an organization which should be in a position to square the decisions of the individual departments with the general regulations and budgetary policy of the entire college. A method of long-term planning may well be the result.

Much criticism has been leveled, heretofore, at President Conant for the methods he has employed to gain the ends outlined in other parts of the Committee's Report. His firing of ten Assistant Professors last spring because the Committee recommended the abolition of the position is a case in point. But here at least, both ends and means must be above all reproach.