Public Campus Research Articles

Tenure and Community in Academe

he secretary ushers me into the office for my final interview of the day-an upper-level medical school administrator. He is running late. I await him in his quiet office that is resplendent with comfortable furniture and the trappings of what we have come to think of as the richest profession-medicine. The plush carpet, the rich wooden hues of the matching tables and chairs, the fleet of secretaries for one individual are impossible to find when I interview colleagues in other professions such as education or social work. Even medicine, however, has hit on hard times. This administrator's medical school is running a deficit in the millions. Threats of faculty layoffs are imminent; a lawsuit by faculty who feel that their contracts and rights of tenure have been abrogated is soon to be filed in court. I am here to interview the individual about his views on the problems of the medical school in general and, in particular, what changes, if any, need to be made to tenure codes. Over the last two years, I have interviewed close to 90 individuals on public and private campuses in the United States. In an age of rapid technological change that reorients not only how we work with our students, but also how we collect data, I also have received over 500 e-mail messages from colleagues in colleges and universities about what they see happening on their own campuses. Tenure is under attack. The medical school administrator, although speaking about issues germane to a medical school, echoes conversations I have had on other campuses and in other schools.

Students' Constitutional Rights on Public Campuses

Students' Constitutional Rights on Public Campuses

The American College Sorority: Its Role in Class and Ethnic Endogamy

The college sorority, though academically disesteemed, is sociologically relevant as an agent of ascriptive groups, maintaining normative controls over courtship which in simpler societies require less specialized expression. Norms of endogamy persist in industrial societies, applying more strongly to women than to men, and being harder to maintain in higher strata, Religionand class-specific schools provide control, but most students today attend heterogeneous public campuses. Since nubile appeal is high at collegiate ages control by postponing marriage would disadvantage women. Ascriptive control therefore calls for an organization which simultaneously will discourage improper marriage and encourage proper marriage; further it must operate where opportunities and temptations for exogamy and hypogamy are strong and at a physical remove from those most committed to control. This being the theory of the sorority, the paper concludes with illustrative description.