Word: briar
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...protestation against the views you present in regard to "Sweet Briar's package program" of "Study by the Seine," may we say that secondhand evaluation is hardly sufficiency for condemnation. Many of the implications in your editorial of January 11, 1955, strike us, five former members of the Junior Year Program, as eminently unfair...
Your primary criticism, that Sweet Briar's services in the fields of "advice and family living" and academic activities are useless and restraining and therefore an unnecessary expense, would scarcely some valid to the mature mind familiar with the situation in Franco...
...phrase "Sweet Briar College's package program" is inaccurate and misleading. The Sweet Briar Junior Year in Franco is an organization under the auspices of Sweet Briar College: however, it is directed by Dr. Joseph E. Barker independently of the college's academic program. Furthermore, the junior Year program is not packaged. Any student may be excused from the "hustling down to Tours" with authorization from the chairman of the French Department at the college or university. In other words, if Harvard's "well-prepared students" knew French well enough "in the first place" to forego this delightful period...
...student is required to take Sweet Briar's own courses, unless so directed by his college or university. These courses are given, for the most part, by professors from the faculties of the University of Paris, the Ecole do Louvre, and the Comedie Francaise. However, the Harvard student, barring objections from Cambridge, is free to specialize as he wishes. So much for the needless imposition of Sweet Briar restraints, "a large academic handicap" which inflicts a foolish financial burden...
While the above letter argues well for Sweet Briar's program, we have received complaints based on first-hand knowledge that participation in the group does negate many educational opportunities of study in France. Students who have returned report that they did have to take six weeks at Tours; but even are if Tours' and participation in Sweet Briar courses are not required, students still have to pay for them, and this fact alone indicates that well-prepared Harvard students must pay for services which they neither need nor want. As we stated, advice is needed, but we repeat...