Marlboro College Prepares to Expand

This is the umpteenth in the CRIMSON'S never-ending and sporadically carried out series on colleges far and wide.

MARLBORO,Vt.--Marlboro college is the smallest college in the United States today. Situated in a remote woodland district of Vermont's Green Mountains, it more closely resembles a small farm than it does a college.

Yet with an enrollment of 29 men and women, Marlboro faces basically the same major problem confronting Harvard with its 4,400 students, that of expansion. For if it hopes to remain in business, the college cannot afford to keep its distinction of "smallest" much longer.

In some respects, this is unfortunate, for there are definite advantages which come with limited size.

The community, for example, is a rather tightly-knit one. On the student level this is especially obvious. The entire student body dines at two tables in the main dining hall. In this atmosphere each student comes to know all the others, and everyone knows what everyone else is taking in the way of courses.

Liberal Parietals

There is also an unusually free mingling of the sexes at Marlboro. Parietal rules are very liberal, 11 p.m. on week-nights and later on the weekends, and the favorite gathering place for students during odd hours is the living room of the girls' dormitory.

In this primarily "adult" atmosphere the academic community is made to resemble as closely as possible the normal community life in which the student will spend most of his adult life.

There are only two faculty members resident on campus, Mrs. Audrey Gorton living in the girls' dormitory and Frederick J. "Buck" Turner living in the class building, Dalrymple Hall. They play the roles of dean of women and dean of men, but actually are considered more as ordinary members of the community than as officials of the college.

They, and the rest of the faculty members, including President Paul Zens, are addressed by their first names at all times. This may possibly be considered an extreme affectation of the "progressive education" school, but in terms of community living it certainly strengthens the intimacy between faculty and students on at least the social level.

"Buck" Turner

The people at Marlboro feel that such a familiar relationship does not reduced the respect accorded to a man as teacher, for such respect is supposedly based on stronger things than the addition of a "mister" before a name. It would appear, however, that this is true more in the case of the top notch teacher than in that of the less able instructor.

"Buck" Turner is one case in favor of the "first-name" system. Outside the classroom he is completely at home with the students and is respected in class for his ability as a science teacher.

One of his most interesting out-of-class activities is the distilling of an occasional bottle of "mountain dew," the proof of which he scientifically measures on a chart of specific gravities. Then, by a slightly less scientivc, but equally effective, method he correlates the specific gravity to the proper proof. His own favorite is specific gravity .932 (102 proof), although occasionally a .930-specific-gravity (104 proof) batch will be accepted.

But in spite of such a distinctly non-professional demeanor, or partly, perhaps, because of it, Turner is held in high esteem as a teacher.

This closeness between faculty and students and the dual role of the faculty member as both teacher and member of the community is maintained in almost every aspect of the college. Responsibility for practically all non-academic and non-financial matters at Marlboro is shared by both students and faculty. "If you treat them like adults," says President Paul Zens, "they'll behave like adults."

Accordingly, school government, in true New England fashion, is entrusted to a collegiate "Town Meeting," presided over by three elected selectmen, a treasurer and a clerk. This body, in which students and faculty play equal parts, meets about once every four weeks and deals with such matters as the term dances and the student work program.

The work program demonstrates the spirit of cooperation that must be maintained in an institution so small and so budget-conscious as Marlboro. The college employs only three persons to do kitchen work and outside jobs on the "campus;" the rest of the necessary work--an assortment of tasks that includes "building a garage," "chopping firewood," and "removing the porch from the girls' dorm"--is handled by the students on Thursday afternoons, set aside for this purpose. The work is entirely on a volunteer basis, but it is pretty clear that everyone willingly does a share.

The major aspect of the work program, perhaps in a category all by itself, is the maple sugaring operation that brings the students and the school about 500 dollars each year. "Buck" Turner is in charge of this job, and about the end of February, when the thaw starts to set in, he and his crew begin to puncture the maples with small plastic spigots connected by an elaborate system of polyethylene tubing running to a central collecting vat in the sugar house down the hill. Occasionally, just to preserve the true spirit of Vermont sugaring, they hitch up one of the few surviving teams of oxen in the territory and strike out into the bush to collect the syrup by hand. Sugaring lasts about a month and helps to break the monotony of cold and frustrating isolation that envelopes the winter weeks.

The spirit of cooperative venture extends even to educational and financial policy. Students are welcome to attend both faculty and trustees' meeting and to speak up on the topics discussed, though they have no vote in deciding an issue.

But if small size has its advantages, it presents its problems as well. Most classes have an enrollment of less than five students, and therefore the material covered can be geared to the individual preferences of each man or woman. Often teachers have no definite outline, when they begin their course. And although there is much to be said in favor of this system, there is always the danger that the work will tend to bog down in a particular area, leaving some material to be covered in a very sketchy fashion.

In a college of Marlboro's size, there also arises the problem of an adequate curriculum. There are only eight full-time teachers on the college staff and a few more part-time instructors. Thus, some rather serious gaps are present in the catalogue of courses. Almost nothing is offered in the way of philosophy, chemistry, classics, political science, economics, and Asian and Russian history and literature. These are, as Marlboro administrators admit, serious omissions for a college which offers the Bachelor of Arts degree.

Gen Ed

To combat the deficiency, Marlboro has relied heavily on the concept of general education. The faculty believes that by giving a student general knowledge of many fields of learning and by encouraging him to extend his scope of knowledge independently he will be able both to cope with problems of modern living and engage in advanced study on a higher level.

Marlboro's scheme of general education is closely modeled on the Harvard system with strong influence from the St. John's College "100 Great Books" program. The college's Council of Academic Advisers includes Kenneth B. Murdock '16, Chairman of the Committee on General Education at Harvard.

David Riesman '31, professor of Social Science at the University of Illinois and another leading theorist of general education, and Scott Buchanan, a former dean at St. John's.

Almost any deficiency or weakness could be overcome if Marlboro had a high enough caliber of student attending its classes. Indeed, an extremely capable student could undoubtedly educate himself at any institution of learning, if he could only obtain enough books. Marlboro, however, because of both its size and its extremely remote location does not have this ideally high-caliber student.

Marlboro lies far outside the cultural mainstream, in its location 15 miles from Brattleboro and 3000 feet above sea level, well into the Green Mountains. There are no theatres, opera houses or research libraries nearby. In such a location the prospective students must have an inner-directed capacity for life in the wilderness or else they will find themselves bored when the long winter sets in.

Perhaps the major block to reaching the best students lies in the fact that Marlboro is not an accredited college. This naturally deters many people from enrolling, which, in turn makes accreditation even more difficult.

To complicate matters, standards for accreditation are somewhat nebulus. Especially in New England, where Yale, M.I.T. and Harvard tend to dominate educational societies, these standards are based largely on intangibles: there are few definite regulations and only vague specifications on such matters as financial stability, size of library, and laboratory and classroom facilities.

In the final analysis, the major block to accreditation is probably Marlboro's size, which keeps its income low, its financial condition definitely unstable and its academic status somewhat below the top level. With these hard facts in mind, Marlboro can find really only one escape, expansion to an enrollment considerably higher than its present 29 students.

To facilitate its expansion Marlboro has appointed a special public relations director, Richard Eldridge, to bring the college's name before more people than have been reached in the past and to interview prospective candidates for admission. President Zens hopes to up the enrollment to 150 students during the next ten years and once having attained this plateau to expand still further, to 250 students.

Despite the drawbacks of a limited faculty and student body, Marlboro has set up exacting new educational policies which have resulted in at least one national distinction for the college. In a test taken by sophomores and seniors last year at 56 small colleges, Marlboro came out with the highest overall record, putting it on a par with or higher than the national average of all colleges, whether accredited or not. Armed with these results, Boyden says he has little trouble persuading most graduate schools to overlook Marlboro's unaccredited status.

The needed students and money, they are sure, will come. Marlboro is reaching the end of the greatest crisis in the life of any college--the grim test of survival during the years of youth and weakness. It has earned its right to growth and has broken through the barrier of obscurity. As President Zens says with determination, "We're in business and people know it now."Marlboro's library, with a small but adequate collection of books, is used both for studying and relaxation. The brown paper covering the shelves in the background is used to protect the books during the summer, when the Marlboro School of Music takes over the campus. Two students chat in Marlboro's snack-bar and canteen, located in the main schoolbuilding, Dalrymple Hall, named after the carpenter who built it. All the classes, the largest of which number fifteen, meet in rustic, naked-beamed rooms and laboratories in this building.