However, there remains a lingering community perception that the administration has ignored the voices of the students and faculty at times, and has made and delivered some policy decisions unilaterally. Why does this perception persist, and how can we as a community address and correct it?

The decision to switch to a 15/2 semester form seemed like a unilateral one. We were all away on winter break when the announcement email came pinging into our inboxes, and even though the administration maintains that community input was used to make the decision, exactly how that input was used was not originally made clear to the community. The impression created by this misstep — that the administration solicits community input but does not necessarily utilize it — has taken the better part of two quarters to begin to fade. As we are now facing another big decision — the crafting of next year’s daily schedule — we hope that the administration will recommit to the ideal of transparency and demonstrate an understanding that the process of arriving at a decision is often just as important as the decision itself. 

The semester daily schedule models posted in the concourse last week were created based on the values, ideas, and desires of students, faculty, staff, and administrators. We applaud the daily schedule Tiger Team for posting the five potential models with space for comments on the benefits and drawbacks of each. The models generated a healthy amount of (mostly) productive discussion.

Now comes the hard part: the models have been taken down, the Tiger Team is working to craft their recommended schedule for Dr. Palmer’s consideration, and we need to know how our input is being used. The comments on the potential models illuminated strengths and weaknesses of each and included suggestions for improvements and changes to each one. In essence, the whole community has been helping to craft the shape of a new daily schedule for the College. It will be up to the daily schedule Tiger Team and the administration not only to respect this craftsmanship in determining the final model, but also to communicate clearly how they are doing so.

This communication should take the form of regular updates on the decision-making process as the final model is fine-tuned. These updates should inform us of how our concerns are being met. The Tiger Team must also understand that simply settling on one of the five models posted last week will not be enough. As our comments showed, the strengths of certain models should be combined to minimize the weaknesses of others, thus resulting in a schedule that reflects the values and needs of the Principia community as a whole.

Will the new daily schedule satisfy everyone completely? Of course not. But if we feel that our opinions were valued and used throughout the process of creating a tangible piece of administrative policy, we should be satisfied with that, even if not all of our individual preferences are reflected in the final schedule.

If we make the daily schedule in a transparent way, it will be something of which the whole community can be proud and can feel that they had a hand in crafting.

Yet with each new change slated for Principia College, work for the planning committees responsible for structuring initiatives like the revised daily schedule and a possible new sophomore-year program becomes increasingly complicated. One of the challenges of re-examining several areas simultaneously is that the process of making decisions and instigating change becomes somewhat circular. 

“So much is happening at once,” said Philosophy professor and general education requirements committee member Chris Young. “A lot of this stuff is going to come to a head in the next year … and one thing that is missing [in this process] is how it’s really going to connect with all the other projects. How are gen-ed [requirements] going to fit into a daily schedule? We [as a committee] haven’t talked with the daily [schedule] team about that. That’s a huge thing that no one around here has really done.” Registrar Patty Langton, chair of the daily schedule committee, agrees that occasional frustration “is a shared opinion. I do think [the process] is a challenge, but I also think it’s very good because none of these [initiatives] are independent, so everything is informing the other discussions. I also think that because that’s true, we aren’t going to be able to make a decision and say, ‘there, that’s done.’ Even though our recommendation will be in, our work is not done.” 

For Langton and the rest of the daily schedule committee — many of whom were involved in gathering information and community input regarding the potential quarter-to-semester transition — work began with the administration’s go-ahead for the move to semesters. “Once we got approval, then it became about the daily schedule. Part of our job was research, becoming experts ourselves. And we’ve done a lot: we’ve looked at academic and daily calendars for small liberal arts schools, big schools, comparative schools, as many as we’ve been able to. We’ve looked at what shapes these schedules have … how many hours a week do they have class? Is it three days, or twice a week?” Soliciting community involvement has also been part of the committee’s process, ranging from public forums in the chapel during winter quarter and one held in Wanamaker so far this spring to a board in the concourse displaying five possible schedules with room for community members’ comments. The tiger team has also received suggestions from faculty departments. “They’ll send e-mails saying, this is the kind of course we teach and this is why we need this particular shape of class,” said Langton. 

The Tiger Team plans to submit a proposal to College President Dr. Jonathan Palmer by the end of this week. “[Dr. Palmer] would like to make the announcement [regarding daily schedules] before graduation activity begins. What I envision, without talking to the team, is that our proposal will be a daily schedule [model] with a rationale explaining why we made the decisions we did,” said Langton. Yet no schedule will leave everyone satisfied, she maintained, because so much of the community’s input was conflictive. “A lot of people are giving us input about what is naturally most important to them. Someone says, we want more night classes, and someone else says, I wish we didn’t have night classes at all. So we’re going to have to make some compromises about what’s best for the majority.” 

It’s a common conundrum in making far-reaching decisions, said Assistant Dean of Academics Joe Ritter, who also serves as the committee chair for the general education requirements tiger team. “It’s a challenge any time you want to make a change. People have given input, and it’s been heard, but [there's still a perception that] if you understood me, you would agree with me.” To that end, Ritter believes the college community must improve its communication skills — on both sides of the fence. “It’s about relationships. With Dr. Palmer, there’s a window for input and then if he feels like he’s hearing the same thing over and over, he says, ‘okay, let’s move on.’ I do think this administration can do a better job of saying, ‘yes, we heard you, you have been listened to.’” 

Easing occasionally fraught administrative and faculty relationships has been just one of the challenges Ritter’s committee has had to grapple with over the past year. First and foremost, they’ve been charged with the task of updating the liberal arts requirements each Principia student must fulfill outside of their major in order to graduate. For a majority of professors and administrators, the current system has been left outdated and outmoded for too many years. 

“Some of our classroom styles are based on what was important in education 10, 15, even 50 years ago,” said Young. “Students should know that there is a lot, and I mean a lot, of effort going into trying to give students cutting edge pedagogy in the general education requirements.” At last year’s retreat to Pere Marquette, 90% of faculty voted in favor of updating the requirements from where they stand now. 

Under the upcoming proposal, students would be required to take two credits from all units, with only one Bible requirement, but an additional Fine Arts requirement included. “The non-labs have been cut entirely,” explained Cate Norton, who serves as the committee’s student representative. “The options are broader as well. Now it’s just two humanities, which is more open than a literature requirement and a religion/philosophy requirement.” 

The committee is also proposing the induction of a new “Sophomore Year Experience” program, designed in part to incorporate skill-based learning and integrated course work. In one possible variation, students would learn within a “shared experience” format “rooted around big-idea questions,” said Ritter. “One possibility is, say, have Chris Young with the Philosophy perspective teaching a course on ‘Are You Free?’ Then maybe you’d bring in a physicist’s viewpoint, and maybe everyone would be reading Herman Melville’s Moby Dick to look at, was Ahab free? Did he really have to chase Moby Dick?” Young said, “With a team of five or six faculty, we could both be breaking into smaller groups of about 10 or 15 and then coming back together to model debate and persuasive speaking around a given topic.” The program would, in Ritter’s words, be “all about content courses.”

Yet new initiatives will be more difficult to successfully implement since the recent budget cuts put a freeze on hiring searches for some new faculty. “[Originally the faculty's view] was that there would be additional faculty and resources for these new ideas … really, the sky was the limit. Now there’s no additional faculty,” said Ritter. According to Young, “when it was presented to us, we were told [by the administration] that resources were not what we should be considering. It was just, ‘what’s the best program you can come up with?’” As a result, when faculty began proposing an increase in integrated-learning and skills-based programs, they “factored in five to ten extra faculty for this. Now not only is that an impossibility, but faculty have been cut back a little bit now that we just pulled the searches,” Young said. “I think it’s a concern for all faculty: what’s the faculty load going to be and is that going to impact our ability to give as much time to the students, to be as dedicated as we are here compared to other schools? [I believe] that will change if we have to teach four courses a semester and are just trying to stay above the water. So it’s a concern that we all share I think, trying to make sure we can give that •same level of commitment.”

Students joined Dr. Palmer Tuesday in the dining room for the first in a series of open dinner meetings with the college president. Students used the opportunity to discuss pressing campus issues with the president. One student was concerned about Principia’s compliance with state sustainability standards, citing the need to utilize renewable energy sources, gas-efficient campus vehicles and an improved recycling program on the campus. Another student touched upon freshmen housing and plans for the Resident Advisor program, saying he felt freshmen are isolated under the current system. Another student spoke about vehicle scarcity during campus breaks, citing international students’ challenge in buying groceries or exploring St. Louis. Dr. Palmer took notes, and closed by thanking students for their contributions.

60th PAC a diplomatic success

Benjamin Chernivsky / photo

Professor John Williams moderates a discussion between speakers Cheng Li and Minxin Pei

Principia’s 60th Public Affair Conference on “China Rising” hosted several high-profile speakers and over 70 off-campus delegates. The conference began Thursday night of Week 1 at the Chapel, where John Hopkins University professor David Lampton gave the opening address on “The Three Faces of Chinese Power: Might, Money, and Minds.” Policy workshops and panel discussions took place Friday, with the evening’s keynote speakers Cheng Li and Minxin Pei discussing China’s political future in a moderated debate.

Closing speaker and Yale professor Jonathan Spence spoke in the Chapel Saturday afternoon about the future of US-China relations. Following Spence’s talk, the PAC Executive Board announced the topic of next year’s Public Affairs Conference: “The End of Oil.”

Metropolitan Opera soprano at Prin

Soprano Osceola Davis of the Metropolitan Opera in New York City performed Friday of Week 2 in a special guest appearance at Davis Music Hall. Osceola performed four songs at the end of the weekly program, after which she visited with the Operatic Masterworks class.

Davis taught a vocal masters class later that afternoon, giving one-on-one specialized attention to five Principia vocal students. Davis offered expert critique to each vocal student at the class, which was open to the public.
On Easter Sunday, Davis performed the solo during the service in the Chapel. Davis, a practicing Christian Scientist, has served for ten years as a soloist for the Mother Church in Boston.

Prin to host unprecedented visitor load

Principia will host 53 prospective students this weekend, one of the largest groups in admissions weekend history. Due to the unusual level of attendance plus the 16 attendant student ambassadors, Gehner House will exceed maximum capacity. Double rooms will be converted to quadruples in order to accommodate everyone.

Weekend activities begin Friday night with a performance by Briars Road at the “Under the Stars” musical event on the Pub patio, and will continue into Saturday with sporting events and a game of Capture-the-Flag between East and West Quads Saturday night.

While we applaud the attempt to solicit student input through the survey released last week by the daily schedule Tiger Team, we feel it is necessary to raise some concerns about the survey itself. As we have advocated in this space before, surveys are one of the best ways to reach the student audience at Principia. For a survey to be effective, however, it must not stanch the creativity of the respondent, constrain his or her answers, or ask questions that fail to contribute to the building of a strong, community-supported solution. Unfortunately, the Tiger Team’s survey failed on all three counts.

The final question in the survey – regarding possibilities for including time for community prayer in a new daily schedule – appears to us to be the only question with the potential to yield a meaningful answer. This question provided respondents with a number of nuanced possibilities and also left room for out-of-the-box solutions to a complex issue.

Why weren’t we asked this sort of question throughout the survey? The survey should have been a forum for student creativity, where we could share unconventional ideas and discuss practical approaches to the daily schedule. Instead, the other survey questions were narrowly tailored and had the effect, not of soliciting fresh possibilities, but of boxing in specific pre-sanctioned priorities. Will the Tiger Team really learn anything from the results of this survey that a consideration of the percentages of students involved in specific activities on campus would not have revealed anyway?

Students might have felt more like meaningful contributors to the daily schedule revision process if we had been given more opportunities to share our creative ideas. Yes, the answers to such questions take longer to process and a good deal more effort to turn into practice. But the time and effort required to deconstruct more complicated responses would be well spent because it would result in a daily schedule that more accurately reflects the needs and values of our Principia community.

Why did the Tiger Team choose to single out specific activities like CSO and orchestra rehearsals to be eligible for “protected time” when these are but a few of the many activities at Principia that occur within regulated time periods? Why not ask about evening classes, about Hymn Sing, about Student Government and Student Activities Board meetings, about Solar Car and about PAC Board? Though an “other activities” field was included, the fact that the Tiger Team chose to prioritize a few activities made any write-ins seem marginalized. 

This survey does little to help the team “determine how our community values various items in our daily schedule,” which was the stated goal of the survey. Open-ended short answer questions would have allowed the team to better assess the activities most important to respondents. 

In our opinion, the most peculiar question included in the survey asked, “Do you agree that decisions about the schedule should be based on what works best for the majority of the community?” Was anyone likely to answer “no” to this question, and, if they did, what would this response tell us? 

As a frequent purveyor of surveys, the Pilot understands the challenges involved in crafting a clear and effective poll. That said, by following some of the techniques we’ve outlined above the Tiger Team could have come up with much stronger open-ended questions. One example would be: how should the distribution of classes throughout each day be approached? Should we have more evening classes, thereby freeing up student schedules for clubs and extracurriculars during the afternoons? Should block classes be offered in greater number or a greater variety of flavors? Should the schedule be more flexible overall, affording individual professors more freedom to set class schedules as pressures demand? There are infinite variations on this question; unfortunately, the survey touched upon none.

We challenge the Tiger Team to seek a more substantive and trust-based partnership with students. Ask nuanced questions, and we will give you thoughtful answers. 

The statement came on the heels of a visit by semester conversion consultant Coleen Pantalone, who met with faculty, staff, and administration before Week 8 to analyze the College’s process and progress.

Faculty members had previously expressed hesitation about the speed of the transition, questioning if the 2010 conversion target was achievable. After Pantalone’s visit, Palmer said he agrees.

“What has been reported to me is that there has been a general sigh of relief,” said Palmer. “It seemed to make more sense to do it, that 2010 was a push … in fact, everything would have had to go right to make it to 2010.”

“It delays the benefits,” Palmer cautioned. “I don’t think it weakens it, but it delays it, so we’re paying an opportunity cost by not making the transition sooner.”

College Development Officer Steve Shedd, who is the head of the semester implementation team, said, “We didn’t think it was humanly possible to get everything done [by 2010] without negatively impacting students … when Coleen Pantalone showed up, she thought that ’11 might be a little aggressive, but ’10 was out of the question.”

Palmer, who said he had “been hopeful” of a 2010 conversion, said Pantalone provided insight into critical elements for the delayed transition.

One of Pantalone’s recommendations, said Shedd, was the suggestion that the Curriculum Committee establish guidelines for the conversion before departments began to develop their specific programs. He added that without those guidelines, departments would be “spinning their wheels or going in the wrong direction.”

Until Assistant Academic Dean Joe Ritter, College Registrar Patty Langton, “and I had really gone through the schedule in some detail,” Shedd said, “There were a lot of people saying, ‘Oh yeah, sure, we can do 2010; we can get going right away.’ And they didn’t really know all of the puzzle pieces.”

“Joe and Patty and I put those pieces together, and could see for the first time that 2010 was not going to work,” he added. However, he asserted that pushing the conversion back to 2011 “is not in any way, shape, or form slowing down or backing off.”

“Things are still proceeding, full speed ahead,” Shedd said.

Philosophy professor Chris Young, a transition team member, said that according to Pantalone, a 2010 switchover was not doable if it would make graduation in four years impossible for current students.

“I think when she shared that with the administration,” Young said, “that they heard that and pushed the date back.”

“The main concern was, how can we do it without harming students who are here?” he explained. “We can’t harm students, or else it shouldn’t be done.”

According to some faculty members, a perquisite of the postponement is the extended time to evaluate curricula. The semester conversion calendar that Palmer emailed to the Principia community lists curriculum development workshops for this quarter, spring quarter, and summer break.

“One of the real benefits … is the opportunity for every department to really reevaluate their program, and to try and make some changes for the better,” said Young. “If you don’t have time to do that, if you’re just rushing to do mathematical changes … then you’re not really getting the worth of the review that comes with something like this.”

“Our biggest concern right now is making sure that the timeline doesn’t drive the curriculum,” he said.

“It’s a much more complicated process than anyone imagined,” Young said, “but it’s doable.”

To best facilitate constructive discussion of these issues, students should turn to the one organ of Principia governance that can, according to its constitution, “represent … the interests, concerns, viewpoints and activities of all students enrolled at Principia College.” Student Government representatives should recognize the importance of their positions as liaisons between the student body and the administration and act accordingly.

The previous student government, in order to increase its visibility and accessibility, took the important step of proposing the movement of its offices to a more visible, centralized location. Their proposal is under consideration by the Trustees. We strongly advocate for the approval of this proposal. In spite of their generous open-office-hours policy, the current position of the Student Body Presidents’ office in the rear of the Pub discourages spontaneous community interaction and presents an obstacle to dialogue with the greater student body.

In light of the current budget crisis, as well as the multitude of major structural changes being proposed, the newly elected student government should advocate for student representatives to be included on all major committees. As Tiger Teams convene to discuss changes to the daily schedule and the restructuring of the Gen-Ed core curriculum, student government representatives should have their fingers firmly on the pulse of their constituency, representing to the faculty and administration the diversity of student perspectives. Student representatives will not only be able to convey clear and accurate information about processes and policies to the students they represent, but can add a unique perspective to the discussion.

Another major task for the new student government leaders is to work with the administration to identify the most effective ways to reach and engage students in the process. Once these are discovered, student government must find the means to capitalize on the creativity of the student body in a substantive way. This communication and cooperation could reap dividends for Principia in the students’ investment in the direction the institution takes.

In this vein, one very important avenue for communication is the newly created Principia Student Government web site. The site, while still largely in development, is designed both to gather student input and to inform the community about Student Government initiatives. It is the desire of Student Government that the website be more than just a list of documents — it should be a dynamic channel for communication and a center for community initiative.

In order to make the best use of this and other avenues of communication, student government must communicate to students the urgency and necessity of increased involvement. Lately, many student conversations on campus have involved retrospective grumbling rather than healthy debate. This behavior, while understandable, is not productive. The new student government can counter this most effectively by compelling the student body to contribute to the solution while actively creating a variety of venues for them to do so.

In this time of financial cutbacks, it is more important than ever for students to hold their government accountable for representing their financial needs. Extra care needs to be taken to ensure that money is flowing to those programs that resonate most keenly with the majority of students, and that process will be best accomplished through a grassroots process of community involvement rather than a compartmentalized series of top-down budget meetings.

In order to demonstrate tangibly its commitment to junior partner participation both in policy formulation and implementation, Dr. Palmer’s administration can clear the way for changes such as those mentioned above to occur. As we have discussed in this space before, it is vitally important for the administration to ensure that student voices are weighed appropriately in all facets of the process. Student government is in a unique position to encourage and ensure this, and should take full advantage of the opportunity.

The student government constitution can be read in full at http://prinweb.prin.edu/stugovt/constitution.htm on the Principia intranet. Comments and questions about the activities of student government can be directed to principiastudentgovernment@gmail.com. 

Visit the new Principia Student Government website (still under development).

cfmgs.com / photo

STATE SENATOR SPEAKS TO STUDENTS ABOUT BLAGO SCANDAL
State Sen. William Haine (D-IL, 56th District) spoke in Wanamaker Hall Tuesday morning about the impeachment of now-former governor Rod Blagojevich. Blagojevich was charged with federal corruption charges earlier this year, including abuse of power in campaign contributions, attempting to bribe The Chicago Tribune, and most notably, soliciting bribes in exchange for President Barack Obama’s Senate seat. In other news, a Principia class studying public policy analysis hosted an on-campus forum last Wednesday for local officials involved in last summer’s flood. Local legislators, representatives from the Army Corps of Engineers, and local law enforcement officials all attended to retrospectively assess Jersey County’s response to the emergency.

STUDENT-DIRECTED/PRODUCED PRODUCTION WINS OVER CAMPUS
Wanamaker Hall rang with laughter February 5 and 6 as eight Principia students performed Ken Ludwig’s “Moon Over Buffalo,” a comedy about two aging actors struggling to stay in the spotlight. Juniors John Griswold and Kim Distel produced and directed the performance independently. Griswold and junior Anna Proctor played Charlotte and George Hay, once-famous stage stars now reduced to playing repertory theater in Buffalo, New York with Charlotte’s crusty mother, Ethel (junior Tabea Mangelsdorf). Their daughter Roz (sophomore Kendra Scott) and her fiancée Howard (freshman Dana Gaubatz) show up unexpectedly, and romance heats up between Roz and her former fiancée, actor Paul (freshman Hunter Hoffman). Meanwhile, Charlotte is courted by lonely lawyer Richard (junior Leland Davidson), and George has a one-night stand with Eileen (sophomore Dolly Sommer), who becomes pregnant and nearly destroys the Hays’ marriage.

salisbury.edu / photo

AWARD-WINNING POET COMES TO PRINCIPIA
Belgian poet Laure-Anne Bosselaar read some of her work Monday evening to Principia students and faculty in Holt Gallery. English majors were out in full force to hear the performance, which included pieces from Bosselaar’s array of published works. Most recently, the European polyglot has been translating French and Flemish poetry into English. In 2006, she and her husband, poet Kurt Brown, translated from Dutch to English a series of poems by Flemish poet Herman de Coninck. This poetry reading is the latest in a succession of visiting lauded poets, including Brown and Gary Gildner in fall 2007, and Josephine Dickinson in spring 2007.

SUSTAINABILITY TEAM PRESENTS PROGRESS AND CONCLUSIONS
A Tiger Team for sustainability initiatives gave two informative presentations Wednesday about their work during this academic year. The team, which included environmentally conscious students and faculty from various disciplines, presented their proposal for both a minor in Sustainability and a Principia Center for Sustainability. Students interested in the minor heard from the Business, Chemistry, and Biology departments, among others. The proposed Center for Sustainability would incorporate environmental work across campus, potentially including work with the wind test tower on Principia property.

PRINCIPIA CONTINUES WEEKEND DANCING SPREE
Holt Gallery has become Principia’s party epicenter, and the fun never stops. On Saturday of Week 4, Joe McNabb held its annual line-dancing JoeDown in the space with country music and a boot-shaped piñata. The week after that, international and domestic students gathered to soak in global music and culture at the Caribbean Salsa Dance, hosted by Principia’s Lazos Club. To round off the festivities, Lowrey House celebrated the holiday of lovers last Saturday with the first ever Valentine’s Day Swing, complete with 1950s costumes and dance instruction. Tomorrow the dancing continues, but the location will switch to the Jam Factory for an Out of Bounds Reggae Party.

It is time for Principia’s administration to put its emphasis on partnership into practice. The students are waiting.

We strongly believe that the processes used to make decisions ought to be conducted in an open, honest, and transparent manner. In a community such as ours, it is essential that we trust each other enough to let this happen.

Three major decisions in particular come to mind as relevant to a discussion about processes. They are the switch to semesters, changes to the daily schedule, and the revision of the general education curriculum requirements. While the Pilot does not intend to take a definitive stance on the issues pertinent to these three decisions, we want to ensure that a policy of transparency is evident in the processes leading to them. 

Many students are frustrated by the decision to switch to a semester system. More importantly, nearly all wish the decision-making process had been handled differently. If the administration would like to avoid the same frustration when subsequent decisions about changes to the daily schedule and general education requirements are made, the process of soliciting community input should be seriously reconsidered.

A lot of recent community conversation has centered on the jarring discrepancy between last quarter’s SAB survey, which placed student opposition to semesters at an alarmingly high 75.5%, and the administration’s assurances that the semester system will enjoy community support. If, as the administration has stated in explaining the discrepancy, the students did not fully understand the arguments for and against a possible switch to semesters, why were no additional efforts made to get more information to them? To be truly effective, a campaign aimed at disseminating information must consider its audience. Students, with their full schedules and myriad extra-curriculars, would have been more effectively reached by informational pamphlets, concourse surveys, or some other centralized information hub, than by meetings in the Chapel. The problem, then, is not that a student survey was conducted, but that it was conducted at the very end of the quarter — far too late in the process to have any serious impact. A series of concourse surveys throughout the quarter, each designed to isolate specific areas of importance to the students, would have been far more productive — especially if coupled with a website or pamphlet detailing the Tiger Team’s findings. The administration should then have made a credible effort to address substantively, rather than superficially, the resulting concerns, allowing the student body to feel that their voice is truly valued in practice. 

The purpose of this article, however, is not to chastise but to advise. When proper consideration is paid to student and faculty input, the administration can further its progressive vision with the full support of a proud and united community, not the opposition — or, at best, the ambivalence — of a confused and disillusioned group of faculty and students. 

The community members tasked with revisiting the general education requirements will be meeting on W6 of this quarter. We hope that this meeting will include student representatives, that the results will be shared fully with the community, and that additional student input will be solicited based on the meeting’s outcome. Furthermore, the administration must communicate that student input is considered and valued, even if it is not fully reflected in policy. The Tiger Team focused on restructuring the daily schedule is making moves in the right direction. According to Dr. Palmer, the members are preparing a survey for the student body and will host at least one more “open meeting” in the Chapel to solicit community input. We hope that this meeting, along with others advertised as forums for community input, will be scheduled at times when the majority of community members can attend–during the lunch hour rather than during athletic practices. 

Principia, as an academic institution, could not exist without its students. It would be ludicrous, then, to assume that major decisions could or should be made without taking into serious consideration the views of the student body. We are not implying that every decision should be made in perfect accord with student opinions, as Principia is not and cannot be a democracy. It is not an understatement, however, to say that a true partnership cannot survive long if one partner (even a senior partner) only pays lip service to the wishes of the other partners.

Student opinions are important. If the students do not have enough information, then it is the administration’s duty to get them that information. We will not be able to move forward united if the administration does not make every effort to include all members of the community in their appropriate roles as valued junior partners, in practice as well as in theory.

Registrar Patty Langton, a member of the Tiger Team, said that in a straw vote held by the faculty earlier this quarter, 44 of the 71 participating faculty members (62%) were for the change to a semester system. Nineteen were against this change and eight abstained. In the straw poll conducted on Thursday, 27 of 60 participating faculty members (45%) voted in a favor of some form of a semester system, as did 32 of 69 staff members (47%).

The student body, however, voted overwhelmingly in favor of the current quarter system. The Thursday straw poll indicated that out of 127 students in attendance, an overwhelming 82% voted in favor of the quarter system, with 54% of those responses indicating support for the present system. The Student Government straw poll, which was filled out by 354 students, indicated that 65% favor the current quarter system.

An overwhelming 86% of freshmen said they preferred either the current quarter system or an alternative quarter-based system. According to Dean of Students Dorsie Glen, many students are concerned about losing the current winter break, and also have reservations about the four-day Thanksgiving break they would get under the semester system.

The faculty vote shows that there is a sizeable faction opposed to the concept, mostly in the music, theater and dance departments. These departments would face unique challenges to the sequential learning and daily practice essential to their programs.

All departments submitted a report to the Tiger Team outlining how a change to the semester system would affect them. The music department’s report outlined the forms taken by music programs at several schools similar to Principia, and how these programs have been affected by the semester system. The report cites significant differences between Principia’s curriculum and the more limited offerings of music programs at other schools. According to the report, “some of the most important offerings in our current program will simply not fit into a fifteen-week time frame and doing so would significantly reduce the quality of our program.”

Langton said she sees the semester system as much easier to deal with from the administrative point of view. Rather than coordinating advising and grading three times a year, both would only happen twice. Langton also pointed out that, under the quarter system, “We never leave the faculty alone to teach. They are taking care of administrative things each week.”

Glen said that the longer summer break under the semester system would not be a problem for students working at Christian Science camps. She and Dean of Enrollment Management Brian McCauley presented their ideas on switching to semesters at a conference of Christian Science camps held at Cedars, where camp directors indicated that the semester system is workable for them.

Economics professor Tom Davidson said that the quarter system is more accommodating to students transferring into Principia, wanting to retake classes, or declaring a major late in their college career.

According to Cal Webster, a senior and transfer into Principia, students transferring from a school with a semester system find it to be a hard transition because, under the quarter system, he is “always on the run, having no time for [himself] to relax.”

“This is a good opportunity for Principia to have productive and harmonious discussions,” said Langton. “I appreciate how comprehensive this process has been,” added Dr. Jonathan Palmer, Principia College president. These discussions have come up many times throughout Principia’s history, starting more than 50 years ago, but none have gone as far or been as comprehensive. Palmer said that other colleges have decided to switch to the semester system either for financial reasons or to go along with other schools, but based on Principia’s standard of Whole Man education he feels we do not have to conform to other colleges.