LETTERS: Thursday, January 27, 2000

Defending the SAS pilotDefending the SAS pilot To the Editor: As the student members of the Committee on Undergraduate Education, we have been in the position over the past year to carefully weigh the educational benefit of moving toward a four-sector, interdisciplinary set of course categories from the current 10-course system. During the course of that year, we have recognized many of the potential problems that Mr. Reiss cited in his column. Two such objections are wholly unwarranted. Mr. Reiss writes that "a student might be able to graduate without learning any quantitative skills, owing to the lack of a mathematical or statistical requirement." This is in fact wholly untrue, as the Pilot Curriculum passed for experimentation by the faculty contains a set of skills requirements, including a quantitative skills requirement. He further insinuates that a student may escape the Pilot Curriculum with little or no exposure to literary analysis. However, course proposal after course proposal received by CUE from some of the University's top professors make clear that the classes involved in the Pilot will have strong grounding in primary sources and the analysis thereof. Mr. Reiss does raise a proper concern, specifically that adapting a four-course requirement in place of a 10-course requirement may allow undergraduates to not obtain depth. To the Pilot's credit, it may be found that in freeing up student electives and reducing the ability of students to evade subject matter they would like to avoid, we will better inspire students to take upper-level elective courses. We may be able, through the Pilot system, to better expose students to depth in a variety of fields by providing interdisciplinary links to areas of study through areas of greater familiarity. Further, by providing fewer classes in fewer course categories, the Pilot may cause fewer Penn students to avoid areas of knowledge simply because they seem too uninteresting or too hard. However, as Mr. Reiss suggests, the Pilot may fail in its attempt to do so. If such is the outcome, we will learn from this failed experiment and use the results to tinker with the current system or to leave it alone. In voting last month to undertake the Pilot Curriculum experiment, the faculty of the College of Arts and Sciences recognized the Pilot's potential to achieve and the need for more information. Should the Pilot curriculum produce Penn students with a lesser love of learning and depth of study than were produced under our current General Requirement, such results will obviously be applied in the long term considerations for the Pilot. While Mr. Reiss raises substantive worries about potential negatives of the Pilot, he cannot argue against the value of experimenting in order to determine if the Pilot can ultimately succeed. Josh Wilkenfeld College '01 Hanny Hindi College '02 The writers are the chairman and vice chairman, respectively, of the Student Committee on Undergraduate Education. To the Editor: Vinay Harpalani's letter arguing in support of an Asian-American center on campus ("A home for us all," DP, 1/26/00) does not make sense. Harpalani correctly indicates that there is great linguistic and cultural diversity among the nations grouped together as Asian. However, Harpalani assumes that this justifies the creation of a center that would inevitably promote the segregation of Asian Americans. That is, even if an Asian-American center would expose students to various Asian cultures, it would necessarily separate them from non-Asians and, as such, is unjustifiable. As in Asia, there is a fair amount of diversity among the Germans, French, British, Spanish and all the nationalities that compose Western Europe. Should we, therefore, have a house for white students to celebrate their diversity? I think that most people would reject such a proposal, since it would inevitably forge a gulf between whites and other races. It is only political correctness taken to the extreme that prevents rational people from taking a similar attitude toward the creation of a house for Asian Americans. Asian Americans are far from an underrepresented minority at Penn. It is unfortunate that there is already such self-segregation among Asian Americans. (Don't believe me? Walk around in the high rises and look at the names on the doors.) Penn should certainly not further encourage this by sanctioning their separation. From its inception, the U.S. was built as a melting pot. Implicit in this was the idea that we ought to celebrate our similarities, not dwell on our racial, ethnic and cultural differences -- when did we get away from this path? It is time for the Penn community to stand up and say racial discrimination, in any form, is wrong. Michael Hartman College '02