State of the College

Only ten months ago a vote of the Faculty created the Social Relations Department, and last summer's term saw the beginning of classes. Perhaps because it is so young, th enewly-created department is still free from a few of the evils which seem t plague some of the more tradition-bound of the University's fields of concentration.

This new hybrid, which attempts to solve a alongfelt need for a breaking donw of the meaningless barriers which separate the various fields of psychological and socio-cultural science, was produced by combining with the old Sociology Department a sizable part of the Department of Psychology and some courses in Cultrual Anthropology, chiefly those of a physiological nature, were bound up into a smaller department, and shunted over to the natural science area where they belonged.

Thus the University has for once led the way in integrating into the common ground of one department three fields which are basically one, yet which are almost universally split among distinctly different social sciences. But this new field is not merely a conglomeration of odds and ends snipped from three other departments and all lumped together in one uncoordinated mass. To the inheritance which it received, the infant Social Relations Department has added a dozen or so entirely new courses, none of which has ever been previously offered in the University. This combination of something borrowed and something new yields a field of concentration which offers possibly the broadest area of knowledge in the University, as it runs the gamut from Abnormal Psychology through Primitive Religion to Political Behavior.

In a department embracing this wide field of learnig, a tutorial program becomes vitally necessary, to serve its traditional purpose of "filling in the gaps" between courses of a well dispersed nature. Although the general dwindling of tutorial has left no department useathed, the inroads here have fortunately not been too severe. Every Sophomore concentrating in Social Relations is still offered group tutorial at a three-hours-a-month elip; while a Junior gets an hour a week, with the stipulation that he reach Group IV. Only among Seniors is the program restrieted to honors candidates; but to these individual tutoring is granted, with course credit. In the midst of a general trend away from the tutorial plan, Social Relations seems to be one of the few fields still offering some sort of program for the masses.

The eight full and associate professors which the Social Relations Department has claimed from the three older departments serve as an able and adequate, if not superabundant, uncleus of permanent talent. Of further aid has been the addition to the platforms of Social Relations of such luminaries from outside the department as Ivor Richards and Pound. Although a dearth of assistant professorships appears here as elsewhere, a surprisingly high level of personuel stability has been maintained among the younger members of the staff--the lecturers and research associates--of whom almost all are capable, and some are outstanding.

Many problems must inevitably arise in a new department created entirely out of the blue, without a comparable precedent in another University. But such a new deparatment, especially one which lays the framework for a truly general education by eliminating narrow departmental divisions, is not tied down by traditional methods and policies culled from the rosy memories of a glorious past. Instead, it may perhaps set a high mark of education, toward which many of the older fields might do well to aim.

Many problems must inevitably arise in a new department created entirely out of the blue, without a comparable precedent in another University. But such a new deparatment, especially one which lays the framework for a truly general education by eliminating narrow departmental divisions, is not tied down by traditional methods and policies culled from the rosy memories of a glorious past. Instead, it may perhaps set a high mark of education, toward which many of the older fields might do well to aim.