More Challenging Soc Rel

The recent change in Social Relations department requirements for under-graduate concentration can only be commended. The new rules will provide the concentrator with a more orderly and worthwhile academic program, as well as increasing the prestige of the deparment.

Potenially the most valuable unifying change is that requiring a full year introductory course, Social Relations 10, for all concentrators. This course, if operated at a higher level of intensity than the present introductory course, can save a great deal of repetition in later course work. The only apparent disadvantage in requiring this course is the probable reduction in the number of non-concentrators taking upper level courses in Social Relation.

The newly required course in methods and the Senior Seminar will also serve to lend continuity to the mass of theory and information that the concentrator in Social Relations encounters. Perhaps though, the most important changes are those making concentration more difficult.

The excessive and ridiculous antipathy against the Social Relations Department and its concentrators by members of other departments, especially the humanities, is certainly in part a defensive romanticization of the values and motives of these fields, but it is a reaction in part rationalized by calling Social Relations a "gut." It is true that the field has not attracted predominantly high caliber students in the past.

The comparatively easy nature of most of the courses is partly explained by the newness and subsequent growing pains of the Department. But now that Social Relations has become more solidly entrenched, it is good to see more demanding courses, and higher standards for concentration. The change for honors candidates requiring six full courses, including a graduate course, will certainly decrease the number of concentrators in the field and send some of the less serious students back to other fields such as English and Government, previously regarded as the "gut" fields.

The tightening of Social Relations requirements should increase the department's prestige, though probably not to the extent it deserves. It will be unfortunate if a field which is highly worth studying in itself and as a basis for liberal education, is not accorded more public respect.