Cornell History Teacher Says Writing Dean Is Incompetent

The two-month-old Cornell University faculty controversy over the competence of the dean of writing there is "a regrettable ruckus," Donald Byker, acting director of Expository Writing at Harvard, said yesterday.

The Cornell controversy focuses on Robert T. Farrell, dean of writing at Cornell, whom L. Pearce Williams, a Cornell history professor, and Dan Margulis, operations manager of The Cornell Daily Sun, have accused of irresponsible writing style in a letter Farrell wrote to The Sun in September.

In the letter, Farrell defended his administrative actions, some of which had come under attack from faculty members who accused him of being an inefficient administrator.

The next day, Margulis wrote a letter to The Sun, pointing out grammatical and stylistic errors in Farrell's letter. Margulis yesterday said these errors are proof of the failures of "the war on illiteracy."

The writing program at Cornell requires freshmen to take two semester of writing seminars, with about 25 pages of writing per semester.

Debbie Solomon, review editor of The Sun, said yesterday Farrell is very articulate and has a national reputation, but "It says something of the state of the English language if the dean of writing doesn't bother to proofread a letter. How do they expect students to treat their own writing?"