Classroom and office space is a somewhat less serious problem, but expansion would be necessary if the University grew even a little. "If someone asked me today for an office, I'd be at ends to help him," reports Buck, who also heads a faculty committee concerned with space allocation. One of the recently acquired New Haven school buildings may very probably be used to solve some of these needs, acording to C. H. Sanford, University Business Manager.
While a new resident college and an undergraduate library are just barely in the planning stage, the New Medical School dormitory is a fact. The university is also expected to bid for a part in a government supported New Haven slum clearance plan that would make possible a low cost housing project for faculty members and married graduate students. At present the project is threatened by the diversion of state funds from the project to the repair of flooded-damaged highways.
Another existing fact is the $2,350,000 Gibbs Science Building dedicated on October 28; the laboratory building represents Yale's hope to bid directly for a larger share of national intellectual leadership, this time in nuclear physics, as dedication speaker Ernest O. Lawrence, Yale '25, Director of Radiation Laboratories of the University of California, pointed out.
This hope for wider intellectual leadership permeates all of Yale's projects under Griswold and is what gives them more than just a defensive tone. But for all their vigor, Yale's building projects in the college would ultimately mean little without plans to make good use of the buildings.
This is the next phase and it has begun, though less conspicuously than the first. It takes the form of attempts to improve the curriculum and the faculty.
Last spring, President Griswold presented a plan which would increase the intellectual demands made on the students while giving them much greater freedom. The plan emphasized long-range learning with syllabi readings to prepare the student for general exams at the end of the year, much like the famous Hutchins plan at the University of Chicago. Only weekly discussion classes would be compulsory and students would hear what lectures they selected, with the aid of an adviser, as most valuable.
Most of the proposals were rejected by the Course of Study Committee as too radical for the present character of student motivation, the makeup of the faculty, and the University's financial state. Nonetheless, the committee submitted a report, approved later by the faculty, which called for many of Griswold's specific recommendations: a two-year reading list, auditing lectures suggested by advisers, and a senior essay project climaxed by oral and written examination as well as a now Divisional Honors program for outstanding scholars.
"We are now putting into practice what we voted in principle last spring," says William C. DeVane, Dean of the College. An increase in seminar discussion courses will probably lead to the addition of three or four new faculty members in honors divisions, he said.
An increase in faculty salaries last year just covered by a $200 tuition hike indicates Yale's interest in increasing the quality in its faculty as well as its faculty-student ratio. In these moves, University policy makes a start at the removal of the second objection to Griswold's original plan, i.e., the make-up of the faculty.
Behind and necessary to all of Yale's projects, of course, is money. During the past two years, Yale has put almost $6,000,000 in construction and remodeling, the highest amount spent for this purpose since the early 30's. Of this, $4,991,000 was from gifts of alumni, friends, and two foundations. These figures do not include the $2,500,000 gift of alumnus John Hay Whitney, New York investor, toward the purchase of the New Haven school property.
Yale might not believe that it can afford indefinite expansion, but it seems to have faith in its ability to raise enough money to create Griswold's Athens. Speaking in October at the banquet which launched the Yale Alumni Fund drive for 1955-56, alumnus Irving S. Olds, former chairman of the board of the U.S. Steel Corporation, gave statistics which indicated, he said, that great potential sources of funds have barely been tapped.
"The country's unprecedented prosperity and favorable tax laws make philanthropic gifts easier," for private or cooporate donors, Olds said. With a systematic exploration of these new sources Yale may well be able to find money to invalidate the third objection to Griswold's plan of last spring, insufficient finances.
This leaves but one objection, the character of student motivation. Criticism of Griswold's plan stressed that most Yale freshmen and sophomores were not equipped to handle the freedom and flexibility which he wanted to give to them. But, in his annual report to the alumni last Monday, Griswold reemphasized his thesis of "quality over quantity." With a limited enrollment in the face of ever increasing numbers of qualified applicants, Yale will of necessity become more selective. If the admissions department can successfully use it's selectivity to choose the best motivated students, the last of the present objections to Griswold's plan will vanish.
Last spring, Mendenhall, said that the Course of Study Committee's report "represents an honest effort at taking the free wheeling plans of President Griswold and trying to equate them with the present situation." President Griswold has now set about equating Yale's present situation with his free-wheeling plans