Shopping

To the Editors of the Crimson:

I would like to add my support and agreement to the letter of Professor Bell of Feb. 5 concerning the uses and abuses of the so-called "shopping period" at the beginning of each term. Of course students should be permitted to visit a number of classes before making final decisions as to which to take, as we did in my own student days. But we were expected to show up on time and sit through all of any lecture we attended; if we wished to visit a class which met at the same time, we had to do so on another day. This has been the rule at every university where I have studied or taught except Harvard.

Students here may not realize how distracting and disconcerting it is for a faculty member to have people stomping in and out of a hall throughout the hour (though they do not forgive the slightest sign of nervousness), or to know that the lecture is regarded more as an audition than as a learning experience. A point Professor Bell did not raise but which should be mentioned is that in large classes, the manners established during "shopping week" tend to last all term. Last fall, I gave a Core course with an enrollment of 155 in which people walked in every day 10 or 15 minutes early, disrupting the lecture in the process. These same people would then sometimes complain to me that they had missed important announcements about exams and papers, though in all fairness the situation did improve after I informed the students of my feelings about it.

Finally, it's a trivial but perhaps telling point that the process of visiting classes is referred to as "shopping." There is an attitude far too prevalent among students at every university these days that an education is a consumer product you buy, a service which is performed for you, rather than a process in which the student must participate, and in which he or she is responsible for his or her own performance. Maybe I'm reading too much into a world, but in the context of many remarks and statements I have heard and read lately, I don't think so. Susan Wood   Assistant Professor of Fine Arts