The Associated Students of Whitman College (ASWC) held the first ever Town Hall meeting on Monday for club representatives and ASWC officers to together to discuss the contentious subject of Core’s future.
The Town Hall meeting serves the purpose of the former House of Clubs, to let club representatives have a say in student policy matters that affect them or those they represent. There will be one Town Hall meeting each semester.
Roman Goerss, ASWC vice president and chairman of student affairs, moderated the meeting and Will Canine, general studies committee member, introduced ‘what should be the future of core?’ to the packed conference room.
Canine detailed the Core curriculum’s 18-year history and its most recent events, which include the omission of the word “Western” from the course description and the rejection by the staff of returning Core to a pod-based program. A pod-based program would entail that the Core curriculum to be split into several unique pods (e.g. science-, politics-, classics-oriented classes), from which incoming students would be able to chose, and teach texts based on its particular emphasis.
The bulk of the discussion centered around three frameworks under which the Core curriculum could be taught.
The first would entail that the Core curriculum retain the majority of its texts, whichever ones the committee decides they should be, and that it provide leeway for teachers to choose several texts of their own accord.
The second would entail an infusion of Critical and Alternative Voices, the optional third semester of the Core curriculum, texts along with traditional Core texts, as to provide a variety of texts not limited to traditional Western thought.
The third would entail a lecture-seminar series that would include, hypothetically, one mass lecture given by a Whitman professor who specializes in the week’s text followed by two small group meetings with professors to further discuss the text.
The meeting was not conclusive and anyone who wishes to have any input or is interested in the subject may contact Canine at [email protected].
