A Faculty Senate four-by-four task force report recently labeled the new curriculum proposal “a solution looking for a problem.” Funny, since as a student, the problem has been obvious to me since I first cracked open the GW Bulletin. Four-by-four is a solution to the problem of curricular incoherence and excess. The real reason four-by-four […]
Polarizing figures may be bad for politics, but they’ve been pretty good to academia – and to GW. Our University has been the proud host to a number of controversial academics in recent weeks. Last Thursday, the academic “royal rumble” of the year took place on campus between conservative author David Horowitz and far-left professor […]
When George Washington conceived of placing a university in the country’s capital, we’re told, his aspirations for it were grand. He imagined a magnet school that would attract the nation’s most talented youth: a premier university for what was to become a premier city. Today, we may note the irony that Washington’s vision was better […]
It is encouraging to know that GW is among the many universities concerned about writing and literacy. Whether by looking at studies pointing to decreasing literacy rates among college graduates or by listening to anecdotes told by long-time educators, administrators three years ago correctly realized that the standing writing curriculum needed a beefing-up. In this […]
Altruism rarely caters to the college student’s budget. While we are asked, as citizens, to donate to charitable causes – as undoubtedly we would – we often discover ourselves short on what is needed most: time and money. We are an age group marked by our idealism and sense of purpose, but our anemic bank […]
The most comically awkward moment of the semester in any class usually occurs on course evaluation day. The instructor, as mandated by University policy, is forced to uneasily excuse himself or herself from class five or 10 minutes early while students are asked to rate his or her performance. What follows is usually a noisy […]
If you are a student paying more than $50,000 a year to attend a university, you are going to expect to receive a certain amount of cosseting. You are going to expect access to luxurious dormitories and multi-million-dollar wellness centers. You are going to expect to be entertained and mollified by your university for every […]
Unless you work in Rice Hall, you’re likely well-acquainted with GW’s unofficial reputation – the campus vibe, so to speak – a muted variation of boisterous ANC declarations which gets circulated in our corridors, classrooms and offices. It’s a wink-wink, nudge-nudge mentality almost universally shared among students and faculty alike, so ingrained that it usually […]
A university is, by nature, a permanent construction zone. When not moving earth to erect new physical structures, it works to shape the souls of students who enter it seeking knowledge, truth and beauty. Universities have traditionally labored so that the former endeavor would facilitate the latter one. The metaphoric ivory tower weds architecture with […]
Before this campus makes a martyr of former professor Michael Schaffer, it would do well to consider whether his human sexuality course was as academically sensible as it was popular. In the fracas surrounding Schaffer’s dismissal, the two have been easily equated. They shouldn’t be. A professor’s popularity is not a reliable barometer of his […]