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Seventy-Seven Years of Editorial Freedom


VOL. LXXVIH, No. 1

ANN ARBOR, MICHIGAN, TUESDAY, AUGUST 29, 1967

ACADEMICS SECI



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Residential

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Opens

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Scheduled for Completion in 1969, New Residence Halls on
North Campus Will Accommodate 1200 Students

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By MICHAEL HEFFER
City Editor
and MARK LEVIN
Summer Supplement Editor
THE OPENING of the temporary quarters of the Residential
College in East Quadrangle this fall provides both the cul-
mination and the commencement of the dreams of many
devoted men about ways to revitalize and extend the academic
excellence of the University.
Many educators throughout the nation look to the College
as one of a number of possible solutions to the problems pre-
sented by the ever-increasing size of student bodies, faculties
and administrative bureaucracies at mass education institu-
tions.
"We have been seeking an answer to a problem central to
all universities, as it is indeed a problem of society at large,"
explains University President Harlan Hatcher. "The question
is how to provide an atmosphere of warmth and intimacy that
will best stimulate the intellectual and personal maturity
of young people, in an age of bigness, complexity and imper-
sonality."
The advocates of this daring, complex, and costly experi-
ment in higher education see it as the fusion of two possible
academic worlds. The College hopes to escape the isolation,
provincialism and limited resources of even the best small
schools while avoiding the impersonality of even the best
universities.
AS THE FACULTY planning committee noted in a recent
report, "It may be possible to combine the virtues of the
very large university and the fine small arts college while
holding to a minimum their respective deficiencies. It is just
this unique contribution that the new Residential College
aims to achieve."
From a physical standpoint, the Residential College is a
college separate from the rest of the 'University, where stu-
dents live and attend classes only with other Residential
College students and also have special seminars and meetings
together, within their residence hall building.
However, as one University Regent puts it, the Residential
College concept is an attempt "to encourage the most basic
relationships between people; the mutual benefit that comes
from working and living with other individuals."
Many educators feel that the great growth of universities
has been at the expense of the relationships between students
and teachers and even between students and students. The
"Multiversity" is too easily the place where students become
lost, and faculty members shut themselves up in little cubby-
holes of increasingly specialized fields.
FACULTIES AND administrators of large universities are
often distracted from the needs of undergraduates by the
sheer size of their institutions, by heavy research commit-
ments and by a necessary emphasis on the teaching of gradu-
ate students.

Construction Is Scheduled to Begin This Fall on a Site
Formerly the Ann Arbor Municipal Golf Course

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