Are you partying all the time? Not working hard enough in your classes? Getting lots of inflated grades and easy A’s?
You must be a Georgetown student, according to a confidential report created last year by Georgetown faculty critiquing the quality of undergraduate intellectual life on the Hilltop.
The Main Campus Executive Faculty Committee on Intellectual Life, a group of 13 prominent professors who influence academic policy alongside the deans and the Provost, released the “Intellectual Life Report 06-07” in March 2007, circulating their findings to certain members of the faculty and administration. The report cites rampant careerism, students’ lack of focus on work, grade inflation, and excessive partying as factors that combine to put the quality of intellectual life among Hoyas at a “crisis stage.”
Setting aside concerns about the content of the report, the fact that it is not available for review by the students it claims to describe is unacceptable.
Considering that this report has led to the creation of two working groups that are currently reevaluating everything from the core curriculum to the undergraduate grade distribution, the report should be made available to students who have an interest in decisions that profoundly affect their daily lives.
Since the report’s release in March, for example, Georgetown overhauled its alcohol policy in a manner disturbingly consistent with the suggestions of the report.
Unfortunately, serious problems with transparency are nothing new at Georgetown. The motivation for the changes in the alcohol policy was never adequately explained by administrators. The Intellectual Life Report, though, represents a new low in what has become a University trend of keeping students in the dark about decisions that affect them directly. Georgetown should publicly release the report, but we won’t hold our breath.
Until then, interested students should take the opportunity to read the confidential report on the Voice website (www.georgetownvoice.com), and to let the University know what you think of the committee’s findings.
