How Good Is It?

Is Brown University one of the nation's best? No one in Providence seems able to agree. The director of admissions says not any more--but the president of the university says he's wrong.

Early last month James Rogers, Brown's director of admissions since 1969, wrote a letter to The Daily Herald that stated that "Brown is not a top college."

Rogers said that the best students who get into Brown, which has a very unstructured curriculum, and other prestigious schools end up going somewhere else. He called the reports of Brown's popularity in past several years "hollow hype."

The Daily Herald reported that Rogers was right. Brown's popularity leaves it behind Harvard, Stanford, Yale, and Princeton, in that order, according to the paper.

In addition, Rogers said that the average of test scores and class rank of admitted students is higher than the average for attending students, because the top students choose to go elsewhere.

Two weeks ago, Brown President Howard Swearer retaliated against the admission director's charges. "Brown is a great university...We're getting the cream of the country."

Swearer responded to Roger's claim that the rest of the academic world views Brown as "complacent" by saying that outsiders simply did not understand Brown's curriculum.

"It's a never-ending problem to explain what the Brown curriculum is a about," he said. "When you're different it's incumbent upon you to explain what you're about."

Brown does lose some students to other schools, Swearer said, but other schools lose students to Brown as well.

Dean of the College Harriet Sheridan joined Swearer in his criticism of Roger's evaluation. "I have a different perspective. I think Brown is a first-rate university. It's its own university. And it is getting superb students," she said. CORNELL UNIVERSITY

Divestment Protests Start Up

Anti-apartheid activists at Cornell barricaded a university building late last month, protesting the school's investments in companies that do business in South Africa.

Fourteen of the 50 protesters were forcibly removed from the lobby of Day Hall, three-and-a-half hours after they first blockaded the building.

None of the protesters were arrested by the Cornell police squad but a university spokesman said protesters are still liable to be arrested after the fact. The university videotaped the protest because the students were violating the Campus Code of Conduct, said Dean of Students David Drinkwater.