Until last year, Brown was in a curricular league of its own. There are plenty of colleges that purport to have some variety of "open curriculum." Some are very close to open - like Amherst College - and others are pretty far from it - like the University of Rochester. But to our knowledge, not a single traditional college in this country, other than Brown, had a completely open curriculum.
We say "had" because Brown no longer has a truly open curriculum. Over the past year, with little dialogue and no fanfare, Dean of the College Katherine Bergeron and the College Curriculum Council have transformed Brown's minimal writing proficiency requirement into a two-course distribution requirement, unless students can demonstrate proof of writing improvement via other means in their last four semesters. Their changes are not the minor tweaks they make them out to be. Rather, they have dismantled the only completely open curriculum in the country.
Seeing Brown fall from its unique place into the realm of its less progressive peers, apparently without so much as an open forum or faculty vote, has been the most depressing moment in our time as Brown students and alums.
We should have seen it coming. A few years ago, there were some rumblings: "W" courses were introduced ("More active writing enforcement in store," April 23, 2009); the deans embarked on an unannounced letter-screening offensive ("Deans screened letters without telling students," Sept. 7, 2009); and the departments were given a mandate to enforce writing standards ("Writing requirement oversight to be shifted to departments," Oct. 7, 2009). Throughout that time, one thing was clear: There were "no plans to require all students to take a 'W' course," and even Dean Bergeron stressed that "students would not be expected to take a specific course" to satisfy the writing requirement.
By the following year, it looked like things had calmed down. But this year it started again in earnest, with a "clarified" writing requirement including WRIT courses ("U. clarifies writing requirements," March 8), and now the updated WRIT-course mandate, which requires students either to take a WRIT-designated course or upload proof of writing improvement in their last four semesters through other means.("Changed requirement calls for second WRIT course," Sept. 25).
How did we get here? It's simple: Brown has a dean problem.
The New Curriculum is the best thing about Brown. It's what makes the place stand out from a crowded field of elite institutions. It's the reason why most students choose Brown. It's Brown's greatest weapon in student recruiting. It attracts and nurtures a special sort of independent thinker - a mindset so distinguishable that you can sometimes identify someone as having gone to Brown simply by sharing a short conversation with them. Brown's curriculum is something to celebrate and brag about.
And yet our recent history is fraught with Deans of the College who just don't get it. Former Dean of the College Paul Armstrong, who stepped down in 2006, fought to pollute our grading system with meaningless pluses and minuses before backing down in the face of student protest and a column penned by Ira Magaziner '69 P'06 P'07 P'10 and Elliot Maxwell '68 P'06, architects of the New Curriculum. And now we have Dean Bergeron, who reintroduced course caps and prerequisites in the guise of technical change - the implementation of Banner - and who has now led the effort to close our open curriculum.
For how much she touts the excellence of Brown students and alums, Bergeron must not have a very high estimation of our intelligence. Or so we gather from her attempts to veil her changes to the curriculum with unsupported claims about the spirit of the curriculum. "These new terms do not represent any change to the requirement," she claims. "They represent ... a better way to carry out what the requirement has always implied." Better according to whom? We don't think Brown students are buying it.
We don't have space to explain the drawbacks of mandatory course requirements. Magaziner and Maxwell did that more than 40 years ago, far better than we ever could. And it really doesn't need much explaining for this audience. Every day, members of our community explain the values of curricular freedom to others: Brown applicants to their nervous parents, Brown students to their jealous peers and Brown alums to their skeptical coworkers. That's what's so upsetting: Dean Bergeron has caused Brown to cede tremendous ideological ground in the name of a questionable methodology that we rejected long ago.
Do we think that Brown should stay the same way forever? Absolutely not. But legitimate change at Brown can't come in the form of dictates from the dean or the CCC. At Brown, the curriculum is owned by the students and the faculty - the students because they designed it and fought for its implementation, and the faculty because the academic power is fundamentally vested in them. The function of the dean is to run Brown's undergraduate college within the parameters of that curriculum, not to hunt for ways to change it. Brown is a place for activist students, not activist deans.
It's time to undo the ill-conceived changes made over the past year and to have an inclusive campus dialogue about the state of Brown's curriculum, how it's working and how it might work better.
Matt Gelfand '08 is the president and executive director of the Open Jar Foundation, presenting this column on its behalf. He can be reached at matt@openjar.org.
