...Field Work, New Theater Aid Community

While the American Legion hurls its red-baiting brickbats at Sarah Lawrence, the College continues to demonstrate quietly that a good part of its educational projects positively aid the local com-community.

For education at Sarah Lawrence College is not restricted to "campus learning." With New York City an extension of the 22 acre campus, the girls do a great deal of their study and research there--visiting museums to supplementt heir art courses, attending concerts to extend their musical educational, and participating in all the cultural activities the "City" offers.

Work is also done with the community of Bronxville and its environs. The College runs a nursery school, both for the town's mothers and for S.L.C. psychological students to observe child behavior. Students work in hospitals, clinics, and other laboratories; as assistant teachers in elementary and high schools; and sometimes spend a whole year doing research on some aspect of the community's life.

At the College, this type of activity falls under the name of "Field Work." The program is not a special or added aspect of the curriculum, but an integral and normal part of the academic work. "The Field Work Program presents another dimension of experience and observation for the students," Edwin C. Soloman, Director of the Program maintains. The purpose of this supplement to class room education, he adds, is to "interest the students in looking at the real data of living."

Observation and Research

Days have been spent at the United Nations Building in New York City, the City Hall, and as silent spectators in a court room. Studies on cancer education in high schools, trade unions, and the shaky situation at the Y.W.C.A. have been conducted.

Three-fourths of the student body participated in the more than 75 field trips taken last year. The most ambitious project undertaken this fall was a trip to the Tennessee this fall was a trip to the Tennessee Valley Authority. Twenty-two girls travelled over 2,000 miles in a bus to study aspects of labor, agriculture, social conditions and culture in the T.V.A.

Students often suggest trips and projects they would like to do, and are generally permitted to do them. Last year, however, this lead to a rather strange research project: To study the Greek section of Yonkers to see to what extent it lives by Aristotle's proposed "rules of life." The program is not interested in training social workers, though, and emphasis is placed on training the students to understand social institutions.

For 13 years, Sarah Lawrence has run a nursery school. Mainly for the use of psychology students to observe the child's activities, the nursery also provides a convenient place to which Bronxville's mothers can send their off-spring. Almost 45 students tender the little tots at some time or other during the year. Weekly meetings with teachers allow the girls to apply what they learn from their work to their studies in psychology.

When asked what were his comments on the nursery school, President Taylor asserted that, compared with the College, the nursery school has "the same methods, but different curriculum and students."

For the first time since 1931, Sarah Lawrence is erecting a new building. While this might not seem extraordinary to a man from Harvard, where the motto is "another year, another building," to students and faculty at S.L.C. it represents the fulfillment of a tremendous need for space, and an opportunity "to take the next steps for the future of Sarah Lawrence education," according to President Taylor.

The edifice will contain an auditorium for theater and dance, a common room, music studios, and work shops. Planned to cost at least $400,000, the building "will be perhaps, the symbolic center of college life," believes architect Marcel Breuer, ex-professor at Harvard's Department of Architecture.

More than 100 students in the performing arts partake in the theatre and dance programs each week. But they do their acting in the basement of a dormitory, and their dancing in an assembly room. The new building will enable them to experiment in drama and dance with new techniques and facilities.

Since Sarah Lawrence has no endowment, except for the leftovers of Mr. Lawrence's original bequest of $1,500,000 given 24 years ago, and tuition covers the College's expenses, for the first time in its history, S.L.C. is making an extended fund-raising campaign to pay for the building. Completion is scheduled for the beginning of September. Trustees, alumni, faculty, and students have all contributed to the building fund so far.

As Harrison Tweed '07, Chiarman of the Sarah Lawrence Board of Trustees, puts it, "The New Arts Building is not a luxury. It is a necessity." Margaret Webster, famous theatrical producer and director, lauds the College's theater program. "In these days the art of the thetre fights a tremendous battle against economic pressure," she says. "Its place in our civilization may well be won or lost in the young theatres of the colleges and universities. Sarah Lawrence has already made a fine contribution to a fine cause."

But the new building will serve an even greater purpose than merely providing bigger and better facilities. It will add one more aspect to Sarah Lawrence's desire to become an integral part of the surrounding communities.

The new building, when it opens, will offer a college theater to the community. Designed to seat 500 inside, or 1,200 outside (the back of the stage can be removed and shows given to people sitting on the lawn), the building will be used as a college center and as a common meeting-ground with the community.

Although in the past relations with Bronxville have not been too good, the situation is getting better all the time. Signs of greater friendliness came earlier this year, when 175 members of the community signed a petition damning an American Legion attack on the College. Such action by the Bronxville citizens is an indication that within the near future, college-community relations will be what Bronxville and Sarah Lawrence College have been looking forward to for the past 24 years.

For the complete story of Sarah Lawrence's running controversy with the Yonkers American Legion and documentation of over forty other cases of academic freedom violation occurring during the past year, see the CRIMSON'S fourth annual Academic Freedom Issue to appear next month.