Brown has Ivy on the brain. Last year Capitol Records pressed a record album entitled "Songs of the Ivy League" including selections from Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Dartmouth, Columbia, Cornell and Pennsylvania. Brown alone was excluded and Brown was hurt.

Despite fresh educational ideas and expanded facilities at the university, the Brown man is worried that he is not accepted in the bosom of the Ivy. The Brown Daily Herald asks "Are We Ivy?" The administration feels Brown holds an unjustifiably low position on the Ivy fringe. Self-consciously the 190-year-old Providence university looks at the rest of the League with puppy-dog eyes and asks recognition for its new high academic standards.

Brown has just completed an extended building program, and instituted a revolutionary new study plan. Both have lifted the university by the bootstraps. People at Brown optimistically point to the best dormitories ever build on College Hill. They envision nation-wide acclaim for their high-powered course plan. And they see the traditional prestige of the "Ivy Label" as rightfully theirs.

But whether the new plans will really be a triumph is still a question mark. As President Henry M. Wriston puts it, "That's like asking whether a six month old baby is going to be president of the United States."

The Wriston era--now 17 years strong--started in 1937 when the balding former Lawrence College president came to Brown. Behind him in Appleton, Wisconsin he left today's youngest educational leader, Nathan Pusey. Together they had pampered Pusey's sophomore tutorial into the outstanding feature of the Lawrence curriculum. Though Wriston moved to bigger things, leaving Pusey as his eventual successor, the now Brown president never forgot the Lawrence tutorial. A modified program came to Brown and this fall is the controversial part of the curriculum.

"IC"-Idea Criticism

Founded last January on a $250,000 grant from the Carnegie Institute, the controversial "IC" plan--short for Intelligent Criticism of Ideas--is the key to Brown's future standing in the educational world. If successful it may bring the long-denied national prestige. So far it is working beautifully.

A cross between Harvard's tutorial and St. John's Great Books course, "IC" departs radically from anything ever offered before at Brown. Approximately 200 freshmen with high averages were asked to take the study. After eight weeks they are responding remarkably well.

The substance of the "IC" is a substitution of reason for memorization. Meeting in groups of 20 with a professor, sophomores and freshmen read, discuss, and above all, criticize original great works in the three fields of humanities, social studies, and natural studies.

"The weakness of a university has always been its first two years," Wriston states. "Now with two "IC" courses required in every field we may have the problem licked."

An English professor explains the student's reaction this way. "They are excited, confused, and everything but bored. They are beginning to see that life isn't wrapped in golden packages. They learn you can't sum up centuries of reasoning in one class period."

Put another way, President Wriston calls this study of books and ideas "the shock we needed around here." The president, who doesn't believe students can be given too much work, is delighted the plan is giving sophomores and freshmen a rough time.

"The worst curse of modern education is understanding a student's capabilities," he states. "Great books courses are superficial for they don't teach students to criticize. Old books aren't important as old books but for the light they shed on future years."

Section men quickly land on the courses' weaknesses and freely admit mistakes. "There are too many humanities and not enough sciences," means one. "Sections are alternately boring and delightful," comments another. But all agree the program has challenged the complacent Brown undergraduate as he has never been challenged before.

Behind the "IC's" early success lie years of planning, Wriston has envisaged an integrated building and academic program. Acting on the theory that keen thinking and comfortable living go hand in hand he instigated the "Quadrangle" idea. "The quad is not just building per se, it's really studying and living all rolled in one," the president explains.