In addition to faculty and facilities, the University sought to extend its emphasis on quality through special events and extracurricular activities. The best known of these is the annual Creative Arts Festival, which has included the world premiere of the English adaptation of the "Threepenny Opera" and a major are exhibit, "Young America--Artists Under Forty."
The School had to start its sports program slowly, of necessity. It had only freshmen in its first year, and has never had the manpower to support teams in a dozen sports. The program began with football, basketball, and baseball; and soccer and tennis have been added since.
There is now informal fencing competition, which has been so popular that it may be elevated to the intercollegiate level next year.
Not only sports, but academic activity got a boost in 1953 with the construction of the athletic center. Utility rooms with great window walls alternately house fencing, modern dance, half-finished paintings, or badminton.
The modernistic, overhanging beams and great windows of the center form an imposing contrast to the school's first athletic venture. "It was a freshman football game against Harvard," Sachar recalls, "and your team had to lend us the pants." The Judges' first team triumphed, 21 to 7.
Brandeis has also borrowed in academic respects. Its General Education S, like Dartmouth's Great Issues course, is required of all seniors. It involves a lecture every two weeks by an outside speaker, and subsequent panels and discussions.
Harvard Roots
Unlike the Dartmouth course, General Education S does not deal with issues, but with philosophies of life. Thurgood Marshall spoke last month, "not about the 'Alabama Story'," says Sachar, "but about how it is to be an American Negro in the South."
The school's General Education program clearly stems from Harvard, and its English Composition course required of virtually all freshmen, is patterned after the Harvard predecessor of Gen. Ed Ahf. Language and physical training requirements are also similar.
The school frankly admits to eclecticism. Borrowing is only a sensible way to achieve quality. "After all, we would be foolish not to try to learn from the experience of older, larger schools," Sachar believes.
Nevertheless, there has been no fear of letting borrowed programs develop. In General Education, for example, there has been a tendency away from "large omnibus courses," and Creative Arts has been added to the traditional three fields of humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences.
The emphasis on quality has been successful. Because the administration has been careful, however, to prevent overextending the educational facilities offered, Brandeis has been the frequent target of criticism on a quantitative basis. Its only graduate school is a small (150) one in arts and sciences, and critics clamor for a medical school--as a haven for Jewish medical students denied access elsewhere because of apparent quota limitations.
Sachar has steadfastly refused, however. The stated reason is that if there is to be a medical school, it must be a good one, and that the thirty or forty million dollars necessary for a good medical school are not available.
Perhaps the more realistic reason is that the found would be very easily available--because of the belief of the Jewish community in quota limits.