Besides good looks, a majority of Sarah Lawrance students posses a commendably intelligent attitude toward both their academic and social lives. Because their school is only a base for week-end activities, they do not remain cloistered native school girls.
Few Mediocre Students
Sarah Lawrence does, however, have a relatively small group of mediocre and poor students. Regrettably, their inadequacies are magnified. Consistent with the theory that Sarah Lawrence teaches the students, instructors often find they must simplify courses because some students are not prepared for the material. On the other hand, some classes can move as fast as the teachers, and the poorer students may have to drop an intensified course. And so, while the college's instructors are sometimes disappointed with an enforced snail's pace, they are often pleasantly surprised.
Without a doubt, most of the Sarah Lawrence student body is satisfied with its work and feels ambitious about future projects. A few girls think the education a sham, that small conferences are little more than bull sessions, and while this may be true sometimes, a girl can always find, both in class and don work, an educational track geared to her speed.
No one connected with the college is particularly worried about either the unsubstantiated accusals of radicalism and loose morals or the atmosphere that results from a free speaking faculty and a free moving student body. Harrison Tweed '07, a Harvard overseer, is the chairman of the Sarah Lawrence board of trustees. Again, in the formation of this body, the college uses a unique framework. The board's 24 members includes one faculty trustee elected by the instructors and two mothers of Sarah Lawrence students.
Ambitious for Future
Tweed's only worry is not with policy, but in making sure that the college gets enough money to pay its bills. As long as the money can be found, he is willing to go along with any of Taylor's plans.
Taylor's immediate goals are more scholarships, lowered tuition, and the completion of the new theatre for the performing arts. He would like to improve facilities for the college's sketchy intra-mural program.
His big, long range aim, however, is to see a man's college next door with coeducational classes. Most of the instructors and students find this picture attractive. During the post-war years, in the days of the veterans, Sarah Lawrence found that classes were much more stimulating with male attitudes and opinions.
The instructors in the performing arts are especially eager to work with men in dancing and dramatic productions. The desire for co-education is, in fact, typical of the college which constantly pushes towards an enlarged educational horizon.
Taylor comments that there are about twenty-five men from Ivy League schools who regularly visit some Sarah Lawrence girl, and attend classes. Taylor likes to see them around, and he considers the boys his students.
Plans more likely to be realized in the near future are the senior honors program, and extension of the dormitory entered education. There are no house mothers in the dormitories, but Sarah Lawrence would like to see more don offices in the dorms, so that education can be further centralized. This corresponds to a general attempt to provide more of a cohesive spirit. Sarah Lawrence could use more week-end, events, so there would be less need for a migration every week.
These programs will probably be accomplished, if Sarah Lawrence demonstrates its past tendencies to improve itself as it matures. The administration has constantly shown a remarkable ability to analyze its own weaknesses and to correct them. Because of Harold Taylor, Dean Raushenbush and an understanding faculty, one may safely predict that Sarah Lawrence will continue to blaze its own academic trails.