• Mission | The Scope of This Report | Executive Summary
• Is There a Leadership Crisis? | Is There a Financial Crisis? | Is There a Faculty Crisis?
• The Master Plan | The Undergraduate Curriculum | The Expansion of the Undergraduate College | Other Issues
• Recommendations
• Resources for Further Study
• Appendix A: The Inaugural Resolution | Appendix B: The New Core Curriculum
• Appendix C: Campus Security Concerns | Appendix D: Chairs of the Committees

On March 4, 1999, the Assembly of the Student Government unanimously passed a resolution calling on our committees to submit a comprehensive report on the current and future status of the University, including but not limited to the University's Master Plan, changes in the undergraduate core and other educational policies, and the expansion of the undergraduate college. (See Appendix A.)

The resolution strongly implied that the Student Government desired an "organized student response" to specific initiatives taken by the current Administration, and it is clear that the Student Government desires the following information in order to take a specific position on these initiatives.

This report focuses specifically on what students find to be the living issues and questions facing our university at the present time. Any report inevitably will be nearsighted and partial, provisional and pluralistic, for there is little campus-wide agreement on most of these matters. In the course of researching this report we encountered a healthy pluralism of accounts. It is exactly for this reason that we deem the one-sided stories told by the present Administration, which often are the only stories heard by the Development Office, our alumni, and the Board of Trustees, both insufficient and misleading.

Obviously, a comprehensive report is beyond the resources of the committees. To tell the story of the current state of The University of Chicago would be to write an encyclopedic account which includes the history and traditions of the University and an articulation of its multiple values and aims. At the end of this report we include a set of resources for further investigation.

It is important to note that these issues are interrelated and involve all segments of the university. It would be irresponsible to speak for every constituency, and yet we must also explain, as best we can, the position of each constituency as we students understand it.

The year 1998-99 has brought the University of Chicago an extraordinary amount of success, even judging by our usual world-class standards. Members of our community continue to receive frequent national and international recognition for our many great achievements, and our academic programs continue to be rated among the best in the world. Individuals have won many of the most prestigious and discriminating fellowships, prizes, contests, and awards in a variety of fields and venues. But in the midst of these successes, we all have heard that the University of Chicago is in crisis. What kinds of crisis do we find?

• Is there a leadership crisis?
  YES, almost certainly.
• Is there a financial crisis?
  YES, probably.
• Is there a faculty crisis?
  YES, absolutely.

This report also addresses three large-scale issues.

Undergraduates resent being told, first, that the faculty cannot staff the courses necessary to teach them, and then, that more and more undergraduates are going to be brought to campus almost solely for the money. We await clear and defensible articulations of the various plans, and the lack of such statements by the Administration leads us to believe that no such defensible articulations exist.

In March 1999, the Chicago Maroon reported survey results which showed:

Finally, we examine smaller issues and then provide recommendations based on our analysis.

Investigation of this question has led to the identification of several failures of leadership, some individual, some systemic. Despite several bright points among faculty and among ground-floor and mid-level administrators, we believe that there is an acute leadership crisis primarily on the level of the President, as well as in the overall failure to persuade students to take seriously a role as full members of the University community.

The University of Chicago is extremely decentralized. The Office of the Student Ombudsman's organizational chart, labeled "Administrative Bureaucracy," names five boards, eight vice presidents, and three other officers, all of whom report directly to the President. Furthermore the President is the official liaison for the entire set of students and faculty to the Board of Trustees. The Provost has at least three associate provosts, an assistant provost, three institutes, five other offices, and deans of four divisions, seven schools, and the College reporting directly to him.

The President. The systemic problems listed below cause most students (particularly undergraduates) to have only a very vague sense of who is in charge of what, and of who is in charge at all. Students expect the President, for better or for worse, to represent the University and its policies. It is clear, from the questions asked in roughly annual interviews in campus newspapers, that students look to the President for clear articulations of our mission and for convincing explanations of his initiatives. We have received neither.

The truth of this analysis is borne out by the disastrous "town hall meeting" with the President on February 15, 1999, the first such meeting with him in two years. Hutchinson Commons was filled with students. When the time came for questions, students lined up through the entire length of the room. It was clear that students in the room felt that this would be the only chance they would have to make their voices heard. When the time came for answers from the President, students expressed profound disappointment at his inability to provide clear, concrete, or persuasive answers to their questions.

Some students mentioned that the President saw the "town hall meeting" as a media event and not a sincere discussion with inquiring students.

All too often, they said, the President seems to say one thing to private University audiences and another thing through the media, somehow forgetting that his audiences turn out to be the same. Our own investigation corroborates this claim. The following examples are most notable. First, the President has said alternately, to different audiences, that the expansion of the College 'is' and 'is not' about money. Second, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, the President maintains that his office had absolutely no influence on the changes to the undergraduate core curriculum (some students see this as a "damage control" measure to deflect the heat from the Administration). Third, despite evidence to the contrary, the President claims that he was misquoted and misrepresented by a reporter for the New York Times. In each of these instances, he has challenged the credibility of persons we deem highly credible.

Such actions have severely inhibited our work to get straight answers. We can no longer rely on interviews between the President and the press, since we have been misled on several occasions. While the hermeneutics of suspicion can be a valuable method in an atmosphere of systematic distrust, we would like to be able to hold our President to a higher standard of truthfulness.

Students are by no means the only ones to complain about poor communications. The Student Liaison to the Board of Trustees has heard a large number of stories told by faculty, mid-level administrators, alumni, staff, and even Trustees that the current Administration (usually they mean the President and occasionally the Provost, and sometimes they sense a more abstract institutional problem) does not adequately listen, does not adequately articulate policies and decisions, and speaks more authoritatively than persuasively on matters of genuine uncertainty.

Systemic Concerns. Students in the professional schools report favorably that their administrators are readily and often available. Most students throughout the University report that when they initiate contact, they are able to meet with most administrators in a reasonable amount of time. Some administrators even have unofficial "open-door" policies, and there are many individual stories of administrators going out of their way to accommodate special circumstances that students have encountered.

But some students in the Divisions and many, especially, in the College report few communications from academic administrators in general, and fewer still from any one administrator. Top-level administrators know the most but seem to send the least information. When the Dean of the College was asked by the Chicago Maroon about communication, he replied that students were expected to search out information independently (3/9/99). (On other occasions when students have asked, however, the Dean of the College has been available to provide information.)

In March 1999, 68% of students polled by the Chicago Maroon reported "clear disapproval over the way the administration" communicates with students. On April 20, 1999, an estimated 1,300 students participated in a protest rally dubbed "The Fun-In," in which students protested against a variety of communication problems, leadership lapses, and policy choices in the University.

The University of Chicago claims to be largely a faculty-run institution, but students rarely receive any news of decisions that the faculty (as represented by the Council of the University Senate) makes as a whole. Minutes of meetings and other kinds of information are generally kept closed to students. Most of all, students are not kept informed of large-scale issues, especially academic and larger institutional issues, facing them and the University of Chicago community, sometimes not even until well after those decisions have been made.

After the significant failure of the President's "town hall meeting," which was initiated by the Student Government, some students said that they lost what little hope they had of top-level administrators taking students' voices seriously. In recent months, however, several administrators have initiated contacts, which have restored hope to many students, while others say this is a case of "too little, too late." These students point to the absence of regular office hours as one among many signs of neglect.

Students have expressed a desire that student-administrator contacts be initiated by administrators and not just by students. Some students say, corroborating the Dean of the College's expectation expressed above, that they feel like they must extract information from reluctant administrators; these students go on to say that information is granted only partially and on a need-to-know basis. On a few occasions, probably for a variety of reasons, student meetings with administrators have been delayed, or details of the meeting places and times or invitation lists have been changed with insufficient notification of student participants.

Faculty seem to express a healthy pluralism of perspectives and a wide variety of assessments of the initiatives of the President and of his choices for implementing them, when students ask. There is rather more unanimity, however, regarding the President's communication skills. There is no shortage of faculty, even among those who agree with the President's initiatives and choices, who will attest to numerous failures of communication, process, rhetoric, and articulation over the whole tenure of the current Administration.

Especially demoralizing is the news that several faculty who are leaving or who are strongly considering leaving our university for others, report that a significant factor for their departure is a dissatisfaction with the directions in which the University of Chicago seems to be headed.

Most notably, 74 members of the faculty signed a strongly worded letter to the Board of Trustees on March 21, 1999, expressing "deep concern at the manner in which the intellectual tradition and the academic organization of our university are being put at risk by its present leadership." It is important to note that not only did these faculty warn about the risks to our intellectual tradition and our academic organization, but they also specifically noted the failure of leadership inherent in the President's manner. This number included 21 holding named chairs, seven department heads, and three former deans of the College. In addition to that letter, individual faculty have circulated even stronger statements among themselves and to Trustees.

Over the past year, several faculty have reported a widespread distrust of and dislike for the President (this is not our conjecture, but their reports), particularly among the Divisional faculty, but not limited to that group. Some faculty even swear vehemently and will declare at the beginning of an interview that "the President has got to go." Specific charges include deceit, manipulation, inability to understand the values of the institution (despite a real dedication to the attempt), decisions made without thinking through the implications, failure to articulate persuasive rationales and defend decisions against challenges, failure to admit mistakes, and failure to take criticism as constructive.

In addition there have been several reports that upon encountering disagreement, the president will tell well-informed people that they don't know what they're talking about. Many of these charges cannot be corroborated independently by students. But this charge is corroborated by the experience of student leaders, when in one meeting with these students he told them that they did not understand or speak for students.

Even some of his harshest critics, however, applaud the President for his great success at fund raising and identifying large-scale financial problems (although this particular issue is still hotly debated).

A second group of faculty expresses support for the President, and they praise him for making very difficult decisions in the midst of a decentralized and often hostile atmosphere. These faculty sometimes refer to the first group of faculty as anxious about change, but that first group of faculty has demonstrated convincingly that they are not opposed to change in general, only "unexamined" change. The charge of being "against change" is too often used unethically as a rhetorical ploy to defend a specific change that is being debated, and we find this charge to be misleading and misplaced, though it is employed by several top administrators as well.

Supportive faculty tend to be less outspoken, and so it is difficult to determine the size of this group. Among faculty who were interviewed, mostly faculty in the Divisions and the College, this group seemed to be about one third of the total.

A third group of faculty, perhaps because there are enough concerns within their own departments and academic and personal lives, do not express much understanding of or interest in these issues, when interviewed. This group also is hard to count, because many faculty declined to be interviewed.

Faculty, again, express a wide variety of perspectives about the Provost. It is often difficult to distinguish comments between those that are about the President or the "Administration" and those that are specifically about the Provost. Only a small number of interviewed faculty chose to speak specifically about the Provost, and they reported much stronger communication skills than the President and a greater capacity to listen and understand than the President. They also, however, noted some of the same propensity for manipulation with which they charged the President, and some charged the Provost with rough-and-tumble tactics inappropriate to the spirit of free and open debate. There have been many reports of a feeling of alienation after meetings with the Provost.

Other members of the campus community, for example members of the Campus Ministers' Group, charge that he on occasion has come to a meeting unprepared and has acted disrespectfully and unprofessionally toward those present. Students, on the other hand, usually report good experiences with the Provost and praise him for quick and reasonable responses.

Another systemic problem is that students have learned from experience that their opinions carry little weight because they remain uneducated and uninformed. The most common excuse given for keeping students out of administrative decisions is that students are unable to contribute anything valuable to the discussion, but this is because students are prevented from getting the information and encouragement they need. When administrators do initiate conversations, students feel unable to contribute and often do not feel that their opinions would make a difference.

Administrators must not idly complain that students do not come to meetings or serve on committees simply because students do not care. It is the job of faculty and administrators to educate students to the point that they do become interested. (This point is very well articulated in late professor Joseph Schwab's College Curriculum and Student Protest.) Poor attendance at an event such as the Provost's "town hall meeting" should not elicit a response from the Provost that he's glad he held the event, because at least he could say he gave students a chance. Rather, the response should be attention to the clear evidence of a problem. Students look to administrators and faculty to provide leadership and the path toward a solution so that we can be good citizens of the University.

A number of student organizations have expressed great satisfaction with particular administrators and their willingness to listen and take appropriate action. Several student organizations, however, have documented their displeasure with the processes by which their concerns are considered. Some organizations have formed specifically to express such displeasure. Concerns about specific issues will be discussed in later sections.

The University of Chicago is very reluctant to provide financial information to students, and so students must rely almost exclusively on faculty, administrators, and trustees for information. It seems that the majority of information, and the way it is presented, is controlled by the President and his immediate staff. Some faculty have reported a feeling of manipulation of the data and a biased presentation of the data. For these reasons we feel we do not yet have an unbiased story about our financial situation.

The financial reports of the Faculty Committee for a Year of Reflection (FCYR) provide the most accessible financial data. The FCYR presented several scenarios and concluded that if the University considers the non-BSD divisions apart from the professional schools (which will be quite overcapitalized), in most scenarios the non-BSD divisions will be quite undercapitalized for about the next twenty years. Undercapitalization, in some scenarios, will continue to be a long-term problem even after twenty years.

A very persuasive dissenting opinion, however, expressed most clearly in the minority report and subsequent writings by Marshall Sahlins, argues that it in most scenarios, our undercapitalization problems as a whole are a short-term rather than a long-term crisis.

In any case, the current Administration has been charged with failing to provide a clear and persuasive explanation of our alleged financial crisis. The FCYR report is said to demonstrate that the processes used to assess the financial situation as well as the benchmarks used--e.g., faculty-student ratios, number of graduate students--have been constructed in such a way as to guarantee a structural dismantling of the University in order to commodify it to match "the forms and norms" of average American universities.

To date there has been almost zero response to the charges. This silence has been interpreted to mean that there is no such explanation.

The Trustees, however, seem almost universally convinced that not only is there a financial crisis of one kind or another, there ought to be fundamental changes to the university in order to solve the crisis. Since a majority of Trustees run for-profit corporations, they have been charged with treating the University like a for-profit business and therefore not acting in the best interest of the University. But the Trustees have access to all the "real" numbers, however mediated by those presenting the numbers, and so it seems correct to give them the benefit of the doubt, but with many qualifications.

An unexpectedly brisk stock market seems to have changed the projections fundamentally, and it seems worthwhile to reassess the case. A member of the FCYR reports that a one-half-point increase in the endowment payout will now make as much money as adding 1,000 college students. The risks of that to the academic quality of the University--including risks of losing out in competition--are nil, he reports. Trustees, however, report extreme reluctance to increase the endowment payout, even while the University of Chicago endowment payout seems comparatively low, citing the risks of having unexpected multimillion-dollar costs at some point in the future.

The most common reason given for our alleged financial crisis is that our endowment is comparatively lower than those of the peer group, and that the real long-term financial crisis is on the order of billions of dollars of endowment, not hundreds of millions of dollars of undercapitalization, regardless of the scenario. This shortfall, it is argued, ultimately will haunt us in an inability to keep up with the peer group. The argument in return, however, has been that "endowment envy," and growing endowments for the sake of growing them, are ultimately incorrect ways of thinking about the mission and quality of a university (see, e.g., the work of Yale's Henry Hansmann). These arguments, on both sides, have not yet been adequately articulated to the University of Chicago community.

The solution that has been chosen by the President and Trustees is based primarily on changing the flow of tuition money: adding 1000 college students and lots of paying Masters degree students, while reducing the size of the Ph.D. student population, and while keeping faculty hires as infrequent as possible. In fact dramatic reductions in the number of Ph.D. students and dramatic increases in M.A. students have already taken place in some fields (partly for independent reasons, such as a declining market for new Ph.D's in some fields). But it is widely accepted that the further risks of this choice are huge, and critics go so far as to say that these risks include putting in peril the academic quality of the University and its "competitive" position.

The FCYR enumerated three recommendations to have begun in 1998 and to be continued through about the year 2000, regarding the assessment of the risks of adding 1000 college students. It looks as though Recommendation 1, maintaining the quality of applications and matriculations, will be successful. But Recommendations 2 and 3, assessment of how to "maintain or improve the quality of undergraduate education" and how to maintain the quality of "graduate education and faculty research" under this plan, do not seem to have been completed.

It is important to remember that maintaining the quality of the applicant pool is only one part of the requirements for gaining faculty support for the plan.

This section pertains almost exclusively to the Divisional faculty and the College faculty (there is almost complete overlap within these two sets of faculty). We have identified two crisis areas among the faculty.

First, despite a number of highly motivated, proficient, and dedicated College faculty, there is an acute shortage of faculty dedicated to undergraduate curriculum and teaching. This shortage is endemic and a permanent crisis for a university which has never unraveled the tensions among research, graduate teaching, and undergraduate teaching shared by one and the same faculty. Such a shortage is only aggravated by the current and future expansion of the College, and it is often reported to be a significant factor in shrinking the Humanities part of the undergraduate core.

A second reason often given for this shortage is that departments are not acculturating their faculty to the traditional mission and ideals of general liberal education for undergraduates at the University of Chicago. Attention to new hires almost always prioritizes undergraduate education last, and for departments that are among the top in the country, we expect that the research function of our faculty deserves to come first. But even after faculty powerhouses are hired, the departments do not sufficiently remind them of their responsibilities as a new part of a well-established academic community.

It is the position of many faculty, including many faculty who are most successful in their own fields, that the challenge of teaching a successful University of Chicago core sequence affords a tremendous learning experience for the faculty who teach in it. This experience ought to be more often articulated, so that more faculty will see the value to themselves, if not also to their students, of teaching core courses. As Wayne Booth said in his 1987 Ryerson Lecture:

The most notable recent articulation of these benefits is given in the 1996 "Manifesto in Favor of the Core" written by faculty in the College Curriculum Group.

A second crisis is that, despite a number of highly skilled, particularly accomplished individual faculty members, some departmental faculties seem to have lost their way and are in disarray as a whole. This crisis is part of the story of the culture wars, part of the story of increasing specialization, part of the story of the rise of "theory" and the increased use of jargon in some disciplines, and--paradoxically for the University of Chicago--part of the story of such increased interdisciplinarity that departments can find themselves losing their particular identities. This crisis affects research and teaching at every level, and it is a hotly debated international crisis. This crisis is most acute in the humanities, as our own faculty will attest.

Despite our strong concerns, the University of Chicago seems to be in less of a crisis in this area than most universities and colleges. Solutions must come from the departments themselves, with the courageous leadership of the department chairs and Divisional deans. If solutions are developed, whole professions will again look to Chicago as the undisputed leader in advancing the courses of the disciplines.

Contrary to popular belief, the term "Master Plan" has been given a narrow meaning. It refers specifically to improvements to the physical plant: building, re-building, and renovation projects. The Student Government (SG) web site, http://student-government.uchicago.edu/, provides detailed information and a map of current projects. This information became available after the inception of the present report, so we defer further analysis to the SG source.

In March 1999, a Chicago Maroon survey reported that "the plans for new facilities . . . were generally warmly received" by undergraduates.

Students continue to have direct contact, from time to time, with the architects who are designing the buildings. These are multiyear projects which will create buildings that will outlast all of us, and we recommend that extensive discussion with the entire University and Hyde Park communities should continue at every stage of each project. We are concerned to ensure that these buildings are constructed with long-term goals in mind, rather than with any manipulation of variables to meet short-term hopes (for example, a manipulation of the size of bedrooms in the new dormitories in order to encourage certain percentages of certain kinds of students in the near term). In light of our serious concerns about the leadership and tactics of the current Administration, we believe that such concerns are justified, even if they seem a bit neurotic.

It is clear that each project in the Master Plan has been given a great deal of thought, and we find the rationales for each project, particularly the much-needed athletic center, to be clear and convincing. One rationale that has not often been given its due, regarding the new dormitories, is that whatever the size of the College, having more students closer to campus can only be a great benefit.

Is it possible that anyone could believe that the alleged financial crisis, with the alleged best solution of increasing of the size of the College, were created for the express purpose of providing a conclusive reason to finally build a stellar dormitory and a student-drawing athletic center close to campus? Evidence for this far-fetched idea would be the Provost's statement in 1997 that the Trustees required "a guaranteed increase in the student population" before they would be willing to approve the financial outlays of the Master Plan (as paraphrased by the Chicago Maroon on 11/21/97).

As the introduction to the College's course catalogue makes clear eloquently and concisely, the undergraduate curriculum contains three parts: a more-or-less "common" set of common core courses and sequences, a set of concentration courses, and a set of electives. Additional proficiency requirements in fields such as physical education and foreign language are also part of the curriculum. Furthermore, co-curricular life such as participation in Registered Student Organizations, and extra-curricular life such as participation in intramural sports and campus housing, are often considered valuable or even indispensable supplements to the undergraduate curriculum. Off-campus internships and close professional relationships with faculty and administrators provide further supplements.

There is also quite a bit of excitement, despite some criticisms, of the plan to increase study opportunities abroad. The value of foreign study seems obvious, but it needs to be better articulated in the context of a coherent educational program for undergraduates.

In fact, the greatest challenges to the present undergraduate curriculum are those which simply ask the faculty to make explicit just what kind of education is being offered, and to make clear to students and themselves just what these parts of the curriculum are supposed to be for. Some faculty and most administrators tell very enthusiastic stories about the high quality of discussion over the past few years as the current curriculum was redesigned. Other faculty, and some administrators (emboldened, perhaps, by the high quality of discussion that came later), tell very disheartening stories about the low quality of those very same discussions. Almost everyone agrees that the small-group and departmental curriculum discussions, perhaps also the divisional curriculum discussions, were the best, and that the inter-divisional discussions, particularly those in the College Council, were carried on at a much lower level of quality.

Four very constructive developments have been especially promising. First, faculty in the College Curriculum Group published a "Manifesto in Favor of the Core" in 1996, which laid the groundwork for further discussion. Second, the Dean of the College collected and published in 1997 a collection of a dozen "Aims of Education" addresses, which provided several valuable starting points.

Third, the Dean of the College has provided a clear rationale for the kind of curriculum frame that was chosen in 1998. He explains this rationale at length in his annual reports, and whether or not this rationale is shared by his faculty, it gives undergraduates one solid, if provisional, way to understand just why their education has been designed in the way they are experiencing it.

Fourth, a growing number of faculty in the College have contributed to the new College Faculty Newsletter, which is designed to encourage sustained, productive discussion of the curriculum and other matters pertaining to the College. It is possible that the success of this endeavor will help solve part of the faculty crisis discussed above. We recommend that the Dean of the College provide leadership and support to this endeavor. As energy for the College increases, the Newsletter can grow into a Workshop and eventually a Center for Curriculum Development.

In any case, all of these discussions have continued as the curriculum continues to be developed within the frame voted on by the College Council on March 10, 1998. In the meantime, the curriculum is in a mild stage of disarray, with students being allowed to choose between an old curriculum (with its own flaws) which is being dismantled slowly, and a new curriculum which is not yet fully in place.

There has not been sufficient time to investigate the status of electives and the status of individual concentrations. The remainder of this section, therefore, is devoted to the common core.

The old core, not counting the foreign language and physical education requirements, consisted of 18 courses composed of one-course to six-course sequences in Humanities and Civilization Studies, Social Sciences, Natural Sciences, and Mathematics. The new core consists of 15 courses in the same subject areas; also, the foreign language requirement may now be met via a competency examination.

A brief but comprehensive explanation of the frame of the new core is available in the undergraduate course catalogue. With the recent changes in the Common Core it was determined that Student Government both assess these changes and take a stance on them. The detailed assessment, by Shekhar Karnik, is available in Appendix B; the stance taken by these committees, however provisional, follows below.

The meaning of the core changes and the processes of change were among the most contested of issues this year. What must be first admitted is that, in principle, there is nothing wrong with changing the core curriculum. In fact, curricular innovation has always been one of the University of Chicago's greatest strengths. The merits of curricular changes must be judged by the level of integrated and broad-based discussion regarding educational and institutional philosophy that goes into such changes. With this in mind, it would not be fair for students to immediately criticize the most recent changes to the curriculum. Many faculty members, seeking to improve general education at the university, put a great deal of time and effort into the revision process. And the new curriculum they devised has both strengths and weaknesses.

A final verdict on this new curriculum must be withheld until all of the details of the new course sequences are revealed. If the core is still solely composed of specifically designed, rigorous, text/primary source based, discussion sequences taught by faculty, then the new core will represent only a modest change to the curriculum. But if the new curriculum contains non-general education or specialized distribution requirement courses (taught by grad-students or faculty disguising their current research interest as a core class), or if the new curriculum relies less on discussion and more on lectures, the new changes will represent a disastrous alteration to general education at the University of Chicago.

We admit that we are worried, for example, by the mixed message that the new options in Humanities and Civilization Studies send students. It is often reported that the core was cut in some areas because some three-quarter sequences in the old core had devolved into a strong two-quarter sequence with an awkward third quarter thrown in somewhere. Now we have a situation in which Hum and Civ require two quarters each, Art/Music/Drama requires one quarter, and a sixth quarter is just thrown in at the end so that students can get 'something extra' via "2+1" sequences. But perhaps this really is one of the best ways to structure teaching and learning in these fields.

At the same time we are encouraged, for example, by the course that has been taken by the Physical Sciences Collegiate Division in order to counter the same kind of situation regarding weaker courses. Again, in each division the final verdict depends on the implementation.

And so, while a final verdict on the curricular changes may be premature, there are a number of facts regarding top administrators' involvement in, and comments on, the curricular revision that reveal a disturbing pattern. This involvement has been documented. It has been alternately denied and admitted to varying degrees. The hotly debated question remains: was this involvement appropriate or not? We believe that it was inappropriate both in form and in content.

The Administration seems to have been directly involved in the curricular revision in order to introduce purely economic considerations, and perhaps for other reasons as well. At the same time, this curricular discussion disregarded student input almost entirely. Many faculty members closely involved with the core changes report to students that the Administration was directly involved in those changes--and that the Administration lobbied heavily for a reduction in the core of 50% or more and made clear that dollars should be a major part of the considerations. The Administration should not have been involved in this faculty discourse, and should not have introduced economic considerations into faculty discussions of the core curriculum.

We also treat with skepticism the Administration's argument that the faculty's vote in favor of the new curriculum proves that nearly all faculty were pleased with the curriculum. It is true that the new curriculum was approved by 75% of the faculty in the College Council who were present for the meeting (20% of the Council was absent for that vote)--but a vote for the new curriculum is not the same as praise for the new curriculum. Faculty seeking to avoid further reductions and/or to reluctantly reduce the core because of a lack of professors interested in teaching undergraduates (as is now widely admitted) were among those who voted for the new curriculum.

It is information like this that students are increasingly aware of. Consequently, students are more and more frustrated with the Administration's increasingly dubious denials.

The most egregious inconsistency about the core changes is that there was no broad-based consultation of matriculated students. While the actual process of curricular revision must be handled by the faculty, the pre-revision work should have included a great deal of student input. The Administration claims that one of the reasons it likes the new curriculum, which results in an increase in electives, is that it enjoys widespread support from a student body that has voiced a desire for more elective freedom. Besides the few "focus groups" used by the Administration, there was no broad-based student consultation. Regardless of how students feel about the new curriculum, the fact is, very few students were consulted by the Administration (when it constructed its rhetoric) or by the faculty (when they revised the core). Rather, the idea that students like the new core, despite the fact that only 20% of students in humanities this year opted for the new core's two-course option in humanities (Chicago Weekly News 5/6/99), seems to have been based on an exit poll of non-students, those who chose not to attend the University of Chicago.

(As one faculty member said: students who chose not to come to Chicago were asked why not, and were given a small number of multiple-choice answers to choose from--including an answer about electives vs. core courses. Enough students checked the box in front of their noses, that administrators convinced themselves that a primary way to dramatically increase the size of the College was to dramatically decrease the core. If this story is accurate, here is another smoking gun.)

The Administration has presented its plan to expand the student body of the College to a size of 4,500 students as if this plan enjoys overwhelming support, is undeniably necessary, and is justified by volumes of incontrovertible facts. These assertions are by no means true. The reality is that expansion is a highly contested issue. There is hardly a student on campus who does not have some concern about expansion. Furthermore, the plan is hotly debated by everyone, it seems, except the President and the Trustees, who have not yet articulated a clear and defensible rationale for the plan.

Several disturbing problems with the plan have prompted widespread student calls for the reconsideration, if not the cancellation, of the expansion of the College. Two major points deserve particular attention. First, there does not seem to be agreement that the university has a financial problem. The university's budget as a whole has a surplus and is forecast to turn a surplus well into the future. Alumni donations are strong and the endowment of the university has doubled in recent years. (See the financial report above.) There also does not seem to be agreement that even if there is a financial solution, that expansion is a viable solution, let alone the best solution.

Even more upsetting to students is the fact that the Administration refuses to release to students other relevant documents and data that supposedly support the plan. There is a great deal of disagreement over the financial state of the university, yet the Administration uses the so-called "financial crisis" facing the university to justify College expansion.

Lost in the rhetoric is the Provost's statement in 1997 that the Trustees required "a guaranteed increase in the student population" before they would be willing to approve the financial outlays of the Master Plan (as paraphrased by the Chicago Maroon on 11/21/97).

Next, students have numerous reasons to believe that College expansion will negatively impact the quality of education and the uniqueness of the University of Chicago. The Administration has not provided firm details about hiring more faculty to offset the increase in the student body. It is a source of frustration that the President wavers or makes vague comments when asked about faculty increases. On top of this, an increase in the size of the College will shift the balance of the grad/undergrad ratio that plays a big part in the intensity and rigor of the College education and of the University's tenor as a whole. Education at Chicago has always been characterized by small, intense, discussion-based, and faculty-taught courses which occur in a unique intellectual environment. Students have good reason to believe that the current expansion plan threatens this type of education.

The point is, students were not included the expansion decision making process either. They have not been given much of the information necessary to evaluate many of the Administration's claims. They see numerous problems with the expansion plan, and they have repeatedly asked the Administration to make all of this clear. Again and again, however, the students' voice seems to be ignored by the Administration. The prevailing assumption on the basis of this silence is that the President no longer has a defensible rationale, even though he has managed to sell the Trustees on the plan.

Undergraduates resent being told that not only do the faculty prefer not to teach undergraduates, but more and more undergraduates are being brought to Chicago simply for the money.

In this section, we examine difficult questions of student governance and allocation of student activity fee money; we express mixed feelings about the current and future state of student health insurance; we express some concern about the new residency track system for graduate students; we express deep concern about campus safety; we express anxiety about financial aid for undergraduates and graduate students alike; we express anxiety about the recruitment and retention of students and faculty of color, and of women in faculty positions; and we express the need for a greater sense of community in the South Side in the midst of great economic, racial, and social differences between the University and much of the Hyde Park community.

The student governing bodies of the University of Chicago include the newly formed Graduate Coordinating Council (GCC), which brings together the leaders of independent divisional and professional school councils, the all-University Student Government, and several independent governing bodies and committees, of various sizes, which are dedicated to specific kinds of projects. Most student organizations fall under either their divisional/professional school councils, Student Government, or both. Generally, sports clubs fall under the Department of Athletics; many music organizations, to the Music Department; and most religious organizations, to one or another of the Campus Ministries. A very small number of student organizations enjoy University support but do not fall under any of these categories.

The existence of student activity fees in the first place implies a broad consensus that collective student activities are good and that it is most equitable and efficient for quarterly fees to be collected from students at the outset. The necessities of long-range planning for annual budgets, however, dictate that activity fee money be allocated on an annual basis, with additional individual activities funded ad hoc by standing committees such as the Student Government Finance Committee.

Student governance and student fees are related primarily to student activities. It is clear that in some ways, the University of Chicago community has an integrated life which includes all students as well as faculty, administrators, and staff. In other ways, student-specific activities abound, and in still other ways, clear distinctions can be drawn among activities that are geared to particular schools or divisions or to undergraduates. Finally, many activities, although they are technically open to students at large, cater specifically to a specific group or subgroup of students.

It makes good sense that student activity fees ought to be divided according to such a schema and be allocated by governing bodies that directly reflect these various constituencies. It also makes good sense that students participate in the decisions that make these determinations.

The current system of governance recognizes the independence of the graduate divisions and professional schools, but does not recognize the independence of undergraduate activities. An investigation by the Graduate Affairs Committee has revealed that this arrangement actually benefits undergraduate activities at the cost of graduate and professional activities, on the order of about 200,000 dollars annually. Undergraduate activities are subsidized by graduate and professional students because too large a percentage of their activity fee is tracked to the all-University Student Government. For these reasons, some students have suggested the formation of a College Council, parallel to the GCC, with its own funds. The difficulty is to determine just how many activities are undergraduate-specific and how many are genuinely of benefit to all students or even the whole University (e.g., film showings and concerts). A simpler solution to the problem of inequitable subsidizing would be to change the percentages used (and this conversation has begun), but this solution will hurt undergraduates if no College Council with its own control of funds is created.

The Graduate Coordinating Council finds a lack of student leaders willing to serve simultaneously their own areas and the GCC and the Student Government. The formation of a College Council would have a similar drawback. If not enough student leaders can be found (either because students are too busy, too uninterested, skeptical that their work would make a difference, or unwilling to work with small amounts of money), two solutions present themselves. (1) Centralize. Abandon plans for multiple councils and leave the all-University Student Government in charge of the majority of the funds. (2) Decentralize. Dissolve the all-University Student Government and either (a) rely on the staff of the Dean of Student Services to divide the funds among the Councils, or (b) rely on periodic Joint Meetings of the Councils to divide the funds, annually or at even greater intervals.

The advantage of (2)(b) is that a tradition of Joint Meetings encourages guaranteed pan-student dialogue and provides a venue for important pan-student business on an as-needed basis. Furthermore, pan-student discussion about such difficult financial issues should prove extremely educational to all students involved. The challenge of such a plan is that students may not be up to the task of doing it right, and so the Dean of Student Services probably would need to work closely with such students anyway.

It is important to keep in mind that many student organizations and activities have independent relationships to the University and need to have a consistent source of funds to continue to thrive. Regardless of the plans to divide student fees and arrange student governance, the first priority must be to ensure the maintenance of our basic institutions. The advantage of (2)(a), which is very similar to the current system, is that there can be much greater consistency, in the form of long-term administrators, in order to ensure such maintenance.

On the other hand, if centralization is chosen, departmental and divisional councils (among others) will not become superfluous because there will always be specific issues of concern to particular groups of constituents. Advantages to centralization include not just an abstract sense of a more democratic system, but also a more unified and consistent student voice, a student-led articulation of the values and methods by which student fees are to be distributed, and opportunities for graduate and professional school students with experience to take leadership roles in educating undergraduate students about governance and management.

Disadvantages of the current system, if nothing is changed, include a widespread acknowledgment that the Student Government has seldom been an adequately representative, efficient and effective body at any time in its history. In part this is due to the lack of leadership from administrators and faculty in educating enough students to care enough to take an active role, which has included explicit statements of disdain for Student Government rather than consistent attempts to help, and which has included a systematic policy of limiting student access to relevant information. While these problems are not unique to Chicago, this does not excuse us from working to solve them.

Finally, the current Student Government represents undergraduates by dormitory and not by academic status, which creates a sense of superfluity because the Inter-House Council already represents students by dormitory. Advantages and disadvantages of the current representational system, as well as most of the matters above, were discussed by an ad-hoc Structure Committee created by the Student Government.

In light of the University of Chicago's recent deeper attention to student life and student services, providing appropriate levels of health insurance is a vital piece of the puzzle, and for some students it is as important as improvements to the physical plant.

A very large number of students across the entire university have expressed that health insurance is the University issue they care about most right now. This feeling is most strongly expressed by students in the graduate and professional schools, as reported by their representatives on the Graduate Coordinating Council, as shown in dramatic responses to a survey, as shown by the large number of signatures on a petition, and as embodied in a student organization formed expressly to "Save Student Health Insurance."

The processes that have led to the current situation, and the prospects for the future, are two related sets of stories. One perspective on these stories, based on several months' worth of analysis, is available from the Committee to Review Student Medical Insurance (also called the Student Medical Plan Review Committee, or the Harris Committee), which presented a report on April 21, 1999.

Members of the committee, as well as members of Save Student Health insurance, have documented their dissatisfaction with the processes and constraints with which they have had to work. This dissatisfaction is part of the story of the leadership crisis explained above.

The Harris Committee report incorporates the strong dissatisfaction with current and recent health care plans and services that has been expressed by a couple of thousand students in a detailed survey. (A notable exception is a strong show of praise for mental health services expressed in the same survey.) Several important and widespread problems were identified.

The Harris Committee report also outlines options for future health insurance programs. As of this writing, no decision has been made regarding which program will be chosen, but it is likely that a proposal by the BSD will be accepted in some form. Most aspects of this proposal seem fairly reasonable, but Save Student Health Insurance (SSHI) names several concerns that have not yet been adequately addressed. SSHI has written that the Committee's recommendations were based on insufficient student input and were, consequently, not made with the student body's best interest in mind. Their major points of critique are as follows:

• Higher costs for students
• Increased cost of covering a dependent (approx. 22% higher than the student's cost, which is unusual for health coverage plans)
• No administrative interest in subsidizing the plan (which seems to be fairly common in the peer institutions)
• The Committee's elimination of focus group research due to arbitrary time constraints
• The fact that neither recommended tier of the new plan covers students who must take a medical leave from the university

Two recommendations of the Committee were to form a stronger Student Health Advisory Committee and to hire a staff member specifically devoted to health insurance issues at the University. Some of the above concerns may be sufficiently addressed if these recommendations are followed.

SSHI also has produced a pamphlet for campus-wide distribution which (1) compares the costs of the proposed University of Chicago student health insurance plan with those of other private universities, (2) provides estimates and contact data for several cheaper plans, and (3) explains that providing this service is necessary because students, in general, do not have time to explore other insurance options and often choose a more expensive University plan by default.

Statute 20 of the University Statutes represents one of the few academic matters that the Board of Trustees has reserved to itself. This Statute defines "the unit of instruction" for all students at the University of Chicago. For Ph.D. students, "the unit of instruction is Quarters of residence, referred to as Scholastic Residence (six Quarters), Research Residence (six Quarters), and Advanced Residence (until the degree is awarded). Active File status exists for students in Advanced Residence under certain conditions."

In November 1998, Robert J. Zimmer, the Deputy Provost for Research, reported that "the Council of the University Senate approved a new residency track system for graduate students enrolled in programs that can lead to a Ph.D., to be implemented beginning in Fall 2000." When the Student Liaison to the Board of Trustees asked a small number of administrators and faculty about Statute 20, none of them had realized that the Trustees had reserved this matter to themselves. It is likely that most or all members of the Council of the University Senate were unaware that their action conflicted with Statute 20. As of this writing, the Board of Trustees has not amended the statute.

In the proposed system, the unit of instruction for Ph.D. students will no longer be Quarters but, probably, Years, referred to as Scholastic Residence (years 1-4), Advanced Residence (years 5-10), and Extended Residence (years 11 and beyond). Active File status and Research Residence are slated for removal. It is important to note that Advanced Residence will have a new meaning.

The most evident result of this proposal is that students will be cut off from certain University resources after ten years. (They will have more access to resources than if they had been in Active File under the old system, but less access than if they had been in Advanced Residence under the old system. Before, students had two choices; now they have one.) We judge that the root cause of this proposal is the perception that time-to-graduation in some departments was considered to be too long (for example, as reported in the Self-Study), and that the goal of the current proposal is to strongly encourage all students to complete their Ph.D. within ten years. This encouragement may be appropriate in many or even most departments, and this part of the proposal enjoys support from a majority of graduate students who were interviewed. But we judge it to be a one-size-fits-all policy alien to the usual flexibility of the University of Chicago and very hurtful to a few departments that will be affected the most. The Department of Anthropology, for example, has documented with great thoroughness how the proposal is inappropriate and hurtful to this world-class department.

In addition, we judge that this proposal would unduly limit the options of students who, for whatever reason, would extend their education into Extended Residence. No exceptions are planned for illness, military service, or any other eventuality, which is another peculiar part of the proposal.

Crime maps of the city of Chicago show that Hyde Park is an oasis of high levels of crime in a sea of even higher levels of crime. Students who feel that the University of Chicago needs to do a better job educating students of crime formed a student organization called "Peace of Mind" in 1997-98. Over the past year, these students have become very disappointed in the Administration's responses to their requests for a safer and more safety-conscious campus. Their specific concerns are outlined in Appendix C.

Students are quite anxious about two recent developments regarding financial aid.

Undergraduates. Earlier this year the Free Press reported that

Administrators claimed at a "town hall meeting" recently, however, that financial aid will not change because students will still have their full financial needs met by financial aid. But missing from this story is that "having one's needs met" includes the taking out of loans, and that students indeed may have to take on more debt than in the past. This case is another in which we feel we have had trouble learning the full story.

Graduate Students. It is well documented that the number of tuition-paying graduate students (especially M.A. students) has risen dramatically in relation to the number of
non-tuition-paying graduate students (especially Ph.D. students) in recent years. Some departments have chosen to admit fewer Ph.D. students for reasons related to the state of their disciplines. But there are reports that departments and divisions have been strongly encouraged by top administrators to admit more and more of the first kind and fewer and fewer of the second kind, on purely financial grounds.

In addition, a more general complaint of many graduate students is that teaching stipends are far too low and that there are far too few opportunities to get such stipends (this opens the question of graduate student teaching, an important question which is left untreated here).

Our nation's history of discrimination, changes in cultural norms, and other factors harder to identify, have all contributed to a situation in which women and persons of color (in most categories) are represented in universities in much lower proportions than in the nation as a whole. The University of Chicago is no exception. Recruitment and retention of women and persons of color among faculty, and recruitment and retention of persons of color among students, are seen as particular challenges here. In light of recent court cases and in particular the national conversations on race and affirmative action, questions about the relative status of different kinds of merit in admission and hiring, and the issue of the (not always followed) university policy of neutrality on social issues, everyone admits that the issues are quite difficult indeed.

Even so, some students and some faculty are very concerned to see the University of Chicago increase its efforts to recruit, among the best qualified students and faculty, a fully representative mix of all kinds of persons. Some students have been working with the Office of Admissions in this regard, and a few feel that not enough is being done by that office.

Retention of all students is low at the University of Chicago in comparison to other schools. This problem is especially evident among students of color, whose numbers are so low to begin with. Students and administrators alike have expressed a desire to increase retention rates in as many ways as possible without diluting the academic rigor of the educational programs.

Students often express the need for a greater sense of community in the South Side in the midst of great economic, racial, and social differences between the University and much of the Hyde Park community. Some combination of individual, personal relationships and organized University programs must ultimately provide for an integrated, natural amity of all people and institutions on the South Side of Chicago. Many individuals, student organizations, and University programs contribute time, money, and energy to get to know the overall community. At the same time, several community institutions and individuals have relationships with members of the University and with different parts of the school itself.

Even so, it is the feeling of many students that much more must be done. It is unclear, however, how to measure these intangible goals.

Leadership Crisis. (1) The Board of Trustees should consider very carefully the questions raised about the President, and to a lesser extent, the Provost, and take whatever action is deemed appropriate or necessary.

(2) The very difficult situation regarding faculty-president relations must be resolved one way or another.

(3) All administrators should either hold regular, well-publicized office hours, or make their availability widely known.

(4) Administrators should make very clear what the administrative structures and hierarchies are, so that students can know who is in charge of what.

(5) Communication with students about important issues should happen early and often and be initiated by administrators.

(6) Students should be given the education and support they need to become able to communicate wisely and effectively about important University issues.

(7) More attention should be given to making sure that honest, true, and respectful answers are given to students when questions are asked.

Financial Crisis. (1) A clear, concise, and persuasive account of the current financial situation and the most likely financial scenarios and solutions should be made available to the entire university community. The actual financial impact of each solution should be made clear.

(2) Alternate accounts and solutions that are equally clear and persuasive should be acknowledged and critiqued.

(3) If there really is a clash of values behind the different accounts and the different solutions, these differences should be acknowledged publicly.

Faculty Crisis. (1) Departments in the Divisions should articulate clear plans for balancing the requirements of research, graduate teaching, and undergraduate teaching, so that adequate resources can be devoted to each.

(2) These departments should acculturate new faculty to the aims and traditions of the University as well as to their departments and divisions.

(3) More faculty willing to teach undergraduates and teach in the core should be hired, particularly as the College population increases. Faculty who already teach undergraduates and core courses should more clearly and more widely articulate the benefits of such teaching.

(4) Solutions for individual departments which seem to have lost their way must come from the departments themselves, with the courageous leadership of the department chairs and Divisional deans. If solutions are developed, whole professions will again look to Chicago as the undisputed leader in advancing the courses of the disciplines.

The Master Plan. The whole Hyde Park community should continue to be involved, as appropriate, at each stage of each major project. The University of Chicago community should continue to be involved, as appropriate, at each stage of every project.

The Undergraduate Curriculum. (1) The progress of the core curriculum should continue to be very closely monitored by the appropriate faculty committees and groups.

(2) Administrators should admit the full extent to which they were involved in discussions of the core curriculum.

(3) Undergraduates should be asked more often about their experience of individual courses and the curriculum as a whole, and survey results should be made widely available.

(4) The educational goals of the curriculum as a whole, and especially the core curriculum--however provisional and pluralistic--should be made more explicit to undergraduates. The accomplishment of this task may one day include a Center for Curriculum Development.

The Expansion of the Undergraduate College. If the financial situation still justifies the expansion of the College, then Recommendations 2 and 3 of the Faculty Committee for a Year of Reflection should be fully implemented, and the results articulated to the whole University community, before any further expansion.

Student Governance and Student Fees. Serious conversations about the various possibilities should continue through the summer. Implementation of any changes should occur as soon as possible.

Student Health Insurance. Discussions about unresolved issues should continue even while the new plan is chosen and implemented.

The New Residency Track System For Graduate Students. The Board of Trustees should carefully consider the implications of the faculty proposal. The Faculty Senate should review its decision to refuse exceptions in special cases.

Campus Safety. The Administration should respond quickly, positively, and cooperatively to the charges made by the students in Peace of Mind, and should address the issues thoroughly.

Financial Aid. (1) If undergraduate financial aid is changing, administrators should acknowledge exactly what is being proposed or what is changing.

(2) The proportion of funded-to-unfunded graduate students should cease to be influenced outside of individual departments, and the University of Chicago as a whole should demonstrate its commitment to an integrated University by "taking from the rich to give to the poor" (as represented by departments, divisions, and schools that are in the red or in the black).

(3) Calls for fair wages and teaching opportunities for graduate students should be taken seriously and should be adequately addressed.

Campus Diversity. (1) Conversations on this issue should continue as strongly as ever, and initiatives should be increased as appropriate. Students should continue to be involved, and their ideas should be critiqued and then implemented as appropriate.

(2) Student retention initiatives should continue to be near the top of the agenda of the College.

Community Relations. Individuals in the University of Chicago community, the institution itself, and the whole South Side community should be engaged in ever more creative thinking and fruitful projects so that we all can be the best of neighbors to each other.

The University Library maintains an extremely long bibliography of resources on the history and mission of all units of the University of Chicago. The reports of the Faculty Committee for a Year of Reflection and numerous other committees and surveys over the past several years have attempted to summarize the key elements of the University of Chicago's multiple values and aims.

Even this work is not enough. A proper story about The University of Chicago must acknowledge that the challenges this university faces are not all unique to us. Changing national and international trends in education, in research, in cultural norms and societal expectations, as well as endless research into the meanings and purposes of universities in general, must be the context in which we examine our own university. One might begin with the U.S. Department of Education and proceed to inquire of hundreds of organizations dedicated to these questions.

A brief but helpful summary of the current status of the University may be found in the 200-page Self-Study Report for the North Central Association and the financial reports in its appendices, produced in 1995-96. The self-study raises as many questions as it answers, but it provides readers with one perspective on the various units of the University. When the report was written, the appendices were seen by undergraduate and graduate students, although this year we encountered resistance when this information was requested.

The difficulty of providing a comprehensive report should in no way inhibit the University of Chicago community from continuing our long and productive tradition of debating with ourselves what we are and why we are here. It only should help us all to be more humble, slower to change our traditions before we understand what they really mean, and more receptive to the plurality of stories that must be told.

Appendix A

WHEREAS, The University of Chicago is experiencing one of those periods in its history where monumental changes in the character of the school have and are taking place;

That, as students of this institution, we consider ourselves fundamental and essential to the very existence of the University, and as such, assert our right to take an ACTIVE part in any and all deliberations on change in the character of the University;

That, to the present moment in history, the current Administration has at times blatantly refused, restricted and/or at the very least given the students only "token" and "afterthought" participation in such deliberations;

And that despite their actions, the Administration and Faculty have themselves on numerous occasions voiced an invitation to student participation, to which very little organized student response has answered;

THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED that we, the STUDENT ASSEMBLY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO hereby direct the Committees on College Affairs, Graduate Affairs, University Relations, and Community Relations to begin the process of formulating a comprehensive report on the current and future status of the University, including but not limited to, the University's "Master Plan," changes in the "Common Core" and other educational policies, and the expansion of the undergraduate college.

SECTION 1. These Committees will devote time and resources in their specific areas, with the coordination of the Student Liaison to the Board of Trustees, to obtain and compile information, documents and statements from various sources, including but not limited to, the Offices of the President and the Provost of the University, The Faculty Senate, and the Students of the University, either individually or in groups.

SECTION 2. In obtaining this information, the Committees or their designates shall have the full power and privilege to "encourage and strongly urge" the production of any and all documents, statements and/or non-confidential financial and academic records in the "name of the Student Government Assembly."

SECTION 3. The report shall be submitted before the Student Liaison to the Board of Trustees submits his report at the end of the spring quarter.

March 4, 1999

Appendix B

The College Affairs Committee has analyzed the core changes in six main subject areas within the College: the New Collegiate Division, Humanities and Civilization Studies, Social Sciences, Natural Sciences, Mathematics, and Languages. It is clear that the new core is not just about the cutting of courses but also about the restructuring of sequences. Implementation of such restructuring is still underway. Some divisions are further along than others.

This is the easiest place to start because according to Master Hutchinson, "The changes will have no effect on the NCD."

According to Master Brown, the Humanities are "neither so complicated nor so extensive as some people seem to think." Previously the Humanities (Hum) and Civilization (Civ) requirement consisted of seven courses in a specific configuration; the new requirement consists of six courses which can be configured in various ways. A student may:

• take three courses in a Hum sequence, two courses in a Civ sequence, and one Art/Music/Drama course;
• take two courses in a Hum sequence, three courses in a Civ sequence, and one Art/Music/Drama course;
• take two courses in a Hum sequence, two in a Civ sequence, and an additional two courses in Art/Music/Drama (one course in Art and one in Music, for instance).

The bottom line is that a student must take at least two quarters in a Humanities sequence, at least two in a Civilization sequence, and at least one in Art, Music, or Drama. Master Brown and others in the Humanities will be offering three-quarter sequences, two-quarter sequences, and (2+1) sequences that provide a third quarter that is designed and taught individually (and not as a staff). "Next year Human Being & Citizen, Philosophical Perspectives, and Reading Cultures will be taught as three-quarter sequences; Greek Thought and Literature will be taught as a 2+1 sequence; Readings in World Literature and Perspectives on Language will be taught as two-quarter sequences, the latter beginning in the Winter." Also Master Walt of the Social Sciences said there are "a number of two-quarter Civ sequences now being prepared," many of which appear to be available one or two years down the road based on the responses given in the Collegiate Division Masters' Town Hall Meeting of April 29, 1999.

Master Brown added, "Of course, there is no reason to believe that students won't, of their own free will, continue taking a three-course sequence in both the Humanities and Civilization sequences." During the first year with this option available to students, it "seems as though about 80% of the first year students have elected to take the third quarter of a Humanities sequence."

In the Social Sciences there have been no changes made in the core requirements, according to Master Walt. Each student still must complete a three-quarter general education sequence in Social Sciences. Some Civ sequences, however, will change from three-course sequences to the 2+1 format described above.

According to the undergraduate course catalogue, Courses & Programs of Study (a.k.a. the "green book"), students must take six quarters of courses in the natural mathematical sciences, including at least two quarters of biological sciences, at least two quarters of physical sciences, and at least one quarter of mathematical sciences. Courses are designed primarily as multi-quarter sequences. Students who elect to fulfill the math requirement using calculus must take two quarters of it.

In biology, the fundamental courses (160s, 170s, 180s and 190s) will continue to be five-quarter sequences (plus Biochemistry). In addition for students who have obtained a 5 on the AP biology test, two very successful courses will continue to be offered: BioSci 244 and then BioSci 245 or 246 or 247 plus Biochemistry. The requirement for students who are concentrating in areas other than biology will consist of three types of sequences:

• There will continue to be two NatSci sequences. Each will be a five-quarter sequence consisting of physical science and biological science courses.
• A new option consists of an integrated six-quarter sequence in Environmental Studies, incorporating physical and biological sciences and math.

Senior lecturer Dr. Rosamond Potter says that he anticipates "that the majority of students who are not concentrating in biology will fulfill their biology requirement in our new two-quarter sequence (with the option of taking additional electives)." The new sequence will begin with BioSci 100, Core Biology. This is designed to be a comprehensive introduction to the full range of biological sciences with signaling and evolution as central concepts to give continuity. The course will meet for six hours per week for one quarter. That class time will include lecture, discussion, group work and labs. "The same BioSci 100 course will be offered every quarter of the year so students will truly have a common [first-quarter] core regardless of the quarter they choose to begin to fulfill their requirement," according to Dr. Potter. In the second quarter, however, students will be required to select from a menu of 19 specialized courses such as those offered now, except that there will be no labs associated with the second quarter courses.

When asked whether the amount and variety of courses will be increased or decreased, Dr. Potter said:

Also by offering four BioSci 100 sections during fall quarter, four during winter quarter, two during spring quarter, and one during summer quarter (each section will have a limit of 48 students), the department expects to provide flexibility for the "non-major" students so that they will be able to start their common core bio sequence during any quarter, and the classes will be relatively small so that discussions and informal group activities will be workable. Next year, among the 19 specialized second courses, seven will be offered in the winter, nine in the spring, one in the summer and two in the fall. The rationale for this arrangement is that most students are expected to begin the sequence in the fall or winter BioSci 100 sections. The second specialized courses have a limit of 40 students each, and the expectation is that discussions will remain workable.

In the Physical Sciences, sequences such as 111-112-113 have remained stable: 111 and 112 are required and 113 is optional. Next year, according to Master Nagel, PhySci 113 will be offered twice, which will lower class sizes and will give students added course flexibility. In the "Rocks sequence" (formerly 108-109-110), 108 will be cut out since it was considered the weakest quarter, according to Master Nagel, but 109-110 will be kept. In the past PhySci 134 ("Global Warming") was considered to be the fourth quarter of the sequence; now it will be bumped up to be the third quarter (with PhySci 135 following as a possible fourth). Also Astrophysics will fall under the 2+1 plan, where the third quarter will give students a variety of options to choose from. In general, it appears that in the Physical Sciences, sequences are being strengthened in content rather than hurt by cuts in the numerical requirements.

The new requirement is to demonstrate competency equivalent to one year of college-level study in a second language before graduation, whether or not courses are taken, according to Courses & Programs of Study. The guide goes on to say:

In addition, administrators in the College are investigating the suitability of providing strong encouragement and wide-ranging options for students to get language training abroad, in addition to several options already available.

Shekhar Karnik
Committee on University Relations

Appendix C

• The lack of established and consistent preventative crime programs by our administration
• The lack of precise, consistent, student-comprehensible policies regarding the distribution of Security Alerts
• The overbearing involvement of the Administration in organizations which were originally initiated and run by students, such as the Sexual Violence Prevention Resource Center and the University Community Service Center; and, conversely, the lack of support our Administration provides to groups that remain student-run
• The control that our Administration seems to exert over the media in terms of crime reporting

• The failure of our Administration to adequately assist student victims of crime
• The failure of our Administration to adequately inform victims of student-on-student crime of their legal rights
• The failure of our Administration to inform students of outside community resources, such as the city's community police meetings, combined with the lack of University resources that provide similar services
• The failure of our Administration to get students involved in the issues of crime and safety, especially in the area of policy

• The silence of our Administration regarding student-on-student crime
• The lack of crime information the Administration makes available to prospective students and their families
• The Administration's role in editing such student resources as the Information Guide and the Women's Guide to the University of Chicago, and the contents of what has been produced
• The Administration's role in encouraging Resident Heads and Resident Assistants to advise student residents who have been victims of student-on-student crime to handle their cases through University channels.

Peace of Mind

Appendix D

Additional acknowledgements: thanks to Aleem Hossain for writing much of the sections on The Undergraduate Curriculum and The Expansion of the Undergraduate College; to Brendon Olson and the students on the ad-hoc structure committees for contributing ideas to the section on Student Governance and Student Fees; and to several faculty and administrators for reading drafts of this report in whole or in part and for providing helpful comments.