The Present Discontents: Eleven Proposals Toward Campus Rest.
Student power and faculty power are concepts omnipresent in current disputes and disturbances in academia, sometimes implicitly, mostly insistently. When combined in the same direction, they are an irresistible force tending to create its own immovable objects. When they conflict with each other, it is less confusing not to notice. By now it should be clear that the demands for faculty selfrule, combined with student review of teaching ability, professional qualifications, curriculum, grading standards, promotions, tenure, and dismissals, will have to be met with all speedy deliberation. The following proposals are offered for any help they may be. (The war and black issues are not omitted for lack of importance, but, on the contrary, because they are so big that it seems a good idea for campuses to pick on problems their own size.) i. Reclassification of "administrator." The term "administrator" now carries a connotation of disapproval weighty enough to sink any office regardless of function or incumbent. "Consultator" is proposed instead. Besides being more acceptable to the faculty, it should reduce the pressures that come from lingering expectations that requests can be granted with anything like dispatch.