Hunter College: Subway Stop or Higher Education

"Everyone at Hunter College commutes--attending this school is like having a nine-to-five job."

Located in New York City, Hunter suffers from all the problems of a "commuter college." Going to Hunter becomes "just a continuation of high school" for many of its 6,000 undergraduates. Since the college has no dormitories at either its Bronx or Manhattan branches, most students live at home. Because it is difficult to make new acquaintances, they must rely on high school friendships.

Faculty members are also plagued by commuter problems. "Don't forget we just breeze in and breeze out too," one professor noted. A teacher who anticipates an hour's ride home may hesitate to chat with students after class. And faculty friendships, like student relationships, suffer from the daily migration: staff members frequently complain that they have few opportunities to meet anyone outside their department.

But Hunter's difficulties lie deeper than the subway tubes. Faculty and students agree that the college's entire structure needs overhauling. They complain about the heavy general education requirements, for the battery of compulsory courses includes art, music and physical education. By requiring a minor as well as a major field, Hunter makes flexible programming extraordinarily difficult.

Impersonality

Moreover the school's impersonality often interferes with its educational system. For instance, students tend to blame Hunter's inflexible academic standards for their extreme grade consciousness; the college automatically expels any student whose index falls below a set level and allows no one to remain on probation for more than two consecutive terms. Further, admissions are equally impersonal, since they are determined solely by an involved computation which includes high school marks and SAT results.

That Hunter's faculty emphasizes teaching rather than research creates further difficulties. Many older professors become stale because they spend so much time in the classroom. And the younger professors show little respect for their senior colleagues because they seldom see tangible evidence of continuing scholarship. As one younger teacher explained, "I'm a little afraid of staying around here too long. Almost everyone I know has lost his freshness and enthusiasm." Another faculty member, college, agreed: "Ninety-five per who has since moved to a different cent of my colleagues have been teaching the same course for about 20 years, and all they're interested in now is going through the motions."

Besides the difficulties of commuting and education, common to both the Bronx and Manhattan campuses, Hunter suffers from schizophrenia. "You can hardly discuss the two branches in the same article," one student said.

Discontent

Tension and discontent characterize the Park Avenue "campus," a rather amusing word to most students. A college handbook describes the tall building which comprises "Hunter downtown" as a "vertical campus." Students are franker: "this is like going to school in an office building."

In addition, only women attend the Park Avenue campus. This accounts for the tremendous marriage consciousness. The girls seem preoccupied with getting married--and resent Hunter because it provides no prospective husbands. In fact, the downtown student appears to regard marriage as her primary goal, for many come from families where an early wedding--not a college education--is a normal aim.

Whatever the students' view of education, faculty members praise their industry. Many teachers complain, however, that while the girls shine in memory work they seldom have independent views. "I have never heard anyone argue," one professor remarked. And students in lower-level courses rarely volunteer information. "Do you have any comments on de Tocqueville's views? . . . Well, what impressed you in the book? . . . I know you've read the book, haven't you? . . . You're all alive, aren't you a desperate teacher said.

Sororities

Only a small percentage of the Park Avenue students belong to sororities, and as at other municipal colleges, a group of friends may apply for a charter as a "house plan." These social organizations resemble sororities, except that they have no national affiliation and frequently end when their charter members leave school.

Such arrangements include relatively few students. The discontent ("I'm just biding my time here") and open unhappiness ("This place is terrible") remain.

More Relaxed

One notices immediately that the Bronx campus is more relaxed. A real campus, which includes several buildings and large lawns, encourages relaxation. Students and faculty are not crowded into a single, tall building, and they do not push into jammed elevators.

Co-education also improves the atmosphere. Like college women everywhere, girls at this school talk about marriage. But they seem to emphasize dating more, perhaps because they are confident of finding husbands eventually. Social life on the campus is healthy, both sexes agree. (Too healthy some authorities fear. As a result regulations forbid students to sit less than eighteen inches from each other on the college lawn. And Hunter enforces this rule; a student explained that the college employs one woman as the school's "necker checker."

Bronx classes also appear livelier than those in Manhattan. The intellectual level, is, however, higher on the Park Avenue campus; when the uptown branch became coed, it encouraged male applicants by admitting some with poor records.

Student Apathy

Although "student apathy" worries leaders on the Bronx campus as well as in the Park Avenue branch, clubs, house plans and sororities can boast moderate success. Candidates for student government office seldom run unopposed, unlike those on the other campus.

But even the more "normal" students in the Bronx can never forget their college's most distinguishing feature; Hunter is, inescapably, a collection of commuters. Facing east from almost any point on the Bronx branch, one sees the convenient subway tracks only a few blocks away.