Holding an open mandate from the university, and sparked by Glenn J. Christensen, who is now Dean of Arts and Sciences, the faculty committee looked into all aspects of the Arts program and has so far succeeded in raising freshman enrollment 300 per cent, and preventing the exodus of several of the most promising younger members of the faculty.

The administration is not quite ready to explain how they are doing it, but there is no doubt that the College of Arts and Sciences is getting stronger every year. One obvious factor has been the appointment of a more systematic admissions director, who was able to present a good case to the high schoolers for studying liberal arts at Lehigh. ("But how do principals and masters get to the point of recommending a certain college?" Dean Christensen asks. "I just don't know.")

Despite the university's engineering tag, several strongly felicitous points can be made about studying arts and sciences at Lehigh, and--at the same time--it can be shown that it is in the interest of an engineering-oriented university to support a healthy liberal arts program.

For example: the English Department would be inadequate, at best, if it had to hire men who wanted only to teach freshman English to engineering students. On the other hand, a 600-man liberal arts college (that is the number of students in Lehigh's Arts and Sciences College) would find it difficult to offer the salary and facilities which Lehigh, as a larger institution, can give to English instructors who are willing to spend a small amount of their time teaching the engineers.

Admittedly, the arts faculty can not line up against that of a great university. But there are several outstanding scholars at Lehigh: as John Leith, Dean of Students, sardonically says, "we've hung a few ostrich eggs in the hen-house for the girls to look at."

The American educational craving for "three-two programs" (three years spent at a liberal arts college, followed by two years at an engineering school, sometimes hundreds of miles away) seems to make more sense as it is set up at Lehigh. The great drawback of the usual three-two program is that students who find it difficult to tear up roots at the end of their junior year refuse to move on and, instead, stay where they are and graduate in applied science, dropping out of engineering altogether. By providing the "three" and the "two" on the same campus, Lehigh encourages the undertaking and completion of more liberally educating technology studies and turns out more engineers for American research and industry. (This, by definition, is good.)

There is the usual amount of intellectual division between the arts and the engineering students. However, engineer and humanist are stripped of their intellectual clothing and herded together again for Lehigh's next process of separation: fraternity rushing. (Upperclass figures--5, dormitory residents; .4, residents at one of the university's 30 national fraternity chapters; .1, commuters.)

According to Dean Leith, who is in a position to know, fraternities are "here to stay," "part of the American way of life," and "a functional arm of the University."

"But we do point out to the boys every now and then that certain rather good institutions get along without them," Leith continues. "And politically, the fraternity tail doesn't wag the university dog."

Another dean, when told that faculty members reside in the Harvard houses, drew an analogy with the house-mother system and commented that "I wouldn't want a mom in every frat."

Members of the university administration, when explaining why they are in favor of the fraternities, can usually be counted upon to begin by reciting figures. The average scholastic standing of frat members they state, is higher than that of the student body as a whole.

These figures should probably be taken with a grain of salt, however. First of all, the university average includes the marks of freshmen, which are very much lower than upperclassmen's. (Fraternities have no freshman members.) And, more important, most frats are very careful not to bid for students with low grades, since any "organized living group" which does not maintain a certain average will be placed on social probation. The fraternities are usually very careful to enforce their own "study hours" rules.

This week, the university is discussing Dean Leith's latest ideas for strengthening "the fabric of social organization" at Lehigh. Leith's proposals, which some think are rather radical, would make it possible for the university to shut down a fraternity which goes on probation three times in seven semesters, and ask its national organization to "re-colonize" it.

The "non-joiners" live in large dormitories and are required to take meals at The University Center. Living in the dormitories is not too communal, and the university has broken the dormitories into more intimate entry sub-divisions. To give dormitory groups more character and identity, they might consider a system of small dining rooms, and perhaps a highly modified form of "rushing" to select residents for each group.

Dormitory residents do most of their sitting around in Packer Hall, The University Center. Each night, they fill the snack bar and watch television. Channel selecting is controlled by the Dean's Office.