Letters to the Editor

Dear VCU Administration,

As a student, I think you have sometimes gone completely overboard in your policies to prevent us from doing anything other than what we’re told. If what I’ve understood about learning at a university is true, we would be allowed to do as we feel in regard to our education-as we are the ones paying for it both with the wallet and with the grades. I understand that this is easier said than done, as rules have been put in place to prevent us from ruining the educational opportunity of our fellow students. Yet, I feel you, the administration, lost sight of this a long time ago to focus more on hiring public figures and retaining them with high salaries for teaching few classes.

I am not sure if this attitude came about when the aforementioned budget issues were referenced, but as it was said in a previous issue of The CT, the focus from administration has been less on the students and more on who’s running the show. If we are to grow and prosper on this campus as a student body, then we should decide how we learn. Isn’t one of the mottoes of VCU “Celebrate the Diversity”? Vague as that statement is, shouldn’t it mean more than just the ethnic composition of the student and faculty bodies. What about the differences between these people in the classroom, in the ways that they learn and retain information?

It seems that the way different major sequence curricula have been adopted, requirements intended to balance out the knowledge of the students are actually quite useless to the people forced to take them. Like so many other things in history, the idea is great on paper, but not in reality. Some of these major sequences ask students to, before they graduate, insult their intelligence by taking classes that are little more than recapitulations on high school courses. The worse part is that most of the time the instructors of these courses themselves are guilty of teaching like it is a grade-school course, with strict attendance policies and ridiculous assignments. In summation of these courses, they are completely superfluous to the student body not specifically interested in the subject, but are simply forced to take the course to graduate.

I think it is in the best interest of the student body for the policy of forced learning to be amended. Mandatory courses for non-majors designed to balance out the knowledge of the students have only helped stint the growth of their minds from learning what they want to know outside their area(s) of interest, as well as insulting their intelligence by requiring courses that are generally taught on a sub-par level. The amendment should allow students to pick for themselves what they are interested in, and a custom list of suggested companion courses outside their major sequence should be offered.

Any course up to senior level should have an optional precursory exam to those who think they have already mastered the course content before the add/drop date. The exam should allow those who pass with a satisfactory score to earn the respective course credit. These changes in policy not only would improve the quality of thought in the student body, but also progress the state of higher education-a goal for which VCU always should be aiming.

Sincerely,
Tom Jones