Refocus
Core discussions need student input

Today TCU faculty meet in an open forum to discuss the proposed core curriculum.

Today an already heated debate will be moved from e-mail and watercooler talk to person-to-person, voice-to-voice.

Today is the beginning of what’s sure to be a heated discussion.

Why? Because it’s all about bruised egos and misdirected goals.

But the real effect of the new core will reach far beyond departmental pride and turf wars. It will reach the very people TCU should be the most interested in. Religion Professor Claudia Camp’s e-mail to the faculty criticizing the proposed curriculum raises some good points, but does it in a way that focuses solely on the academia viewpoint, only mentioning students six times in the entire writing.

During the redrafting process, TCU must remember that its focus and means of instruction will have a great impact on the type of students it attracts. While it may be beneficial to push something new through the system for publicity and the much-desired opportunity to be first, it will kill TCU in the long run if the interests of individual departments outweigh the interests of the students and TCU as a whole.

Camp is right in saying the administration needs to slow down the redrafting process and carefully examine all the options. But instead of simply looking to the needs of departments classified as humanities and social sciences, faculty and administration should look to the interests of the ones who have the most at stake in the reshaping of the requirements - the students.

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