Expos Blues

Entering freshmen find plenty to complain about here: Union food, strict parietal hours, expos. Bv the spring most are reconciled to the quality of the meals; adept at sneaking girls into their dorm, but still a bit resentful of expository writing.

Designed to "help students write correct and effective English by presenting the fundamentals of orderly discourse and rhetoric," Harvard's only required course, Expository Writing 10hf is an unsolicited and painful addendum to most Freshmen schedules. Papers are usually submitted after hectic all-nighters (first semester) or two weeks late (second semester), a few books are discussed, but there's little reason to believe that the average freshman emerges with new confidence in his ability to organize a coherent exam essay.

The ennui could be dispelled if the course followed a program it developed two years ago for its better students. Middle-group sections on topics like "Exposition and Scientific Methods" and "Exposition and Autobiography" have been over-applied, well-taught, and successful.

Financial constraints probably make it impossible to provide such experienced teachers and small sections for all freshmen, but the principle of centering writing courses on a genre or a general theme could be adapted to the whole course. If students could select the type of course they wanted, much of the present psychological dissatisfaction would be eliminated.

The expos program has been flexible. Last year the middle-group courses were started; next year, following a Freshman Council recommendation, a few experimental sections dealing with topical problems will be offered. But it is time for the course to start teaching all its students with material as interesting as it now gives its best.

The Harvard Policy Committee will study the program next year, and that audit is overdue. Part of the explanation for the continued tedium of Expos is the total lack of Upperclass interest in sparing Freshmen what they suffered.