LET US not miss this opportunity. Though the University is now abuzz with gossip over the shakeup of the leadership of the Echols program, melodrama is fleeting. But Anthropology Prof. Richard Handler's instatement as Echols dean should bring with it some serious and permanent reevaluation about the program's role and consequences for the student body.
The University's reverence for the ideals of Thomas Jefferson is as concrete as the colonnades that line the Lawn. So much so, in fact, that "What Would Jefferson Do?" is still considered a yardstick for issues here.
At this crossroads of the Echols program, then, comes the chance to reexamine this institution, one of the most un-Jeffersonian at our school. The agrarian who founded this university disliked few things more than aristocracy; it's not much of a stretch to imagine his distaste for the educationally elitist Echols program.
It bears remarking, though that a much-needed discussion of the program should in no way insinuate that existing Echols Scholars, current or past, are undeserving of their recognition. There is no need to take the selection system to task; the students who wear the Echols mantle have earned it with their high school grades and SAT scores and maintain it with their contributions to academic and extracurricular life and high intellectual achievement at the University.
The problem is, rather, that this high achievement being nurtured and developed at the expense of the education of the masses of "average" students. It may seem crass to discuss academic opportunity as a zero-sum game where the benefit of one student is predicated on the detriment of another, but, at a public university with very limited resources, this is unfortunately the case.
Nowhere is this more apparent than in the semi-annual debacle of the course registration process. There are simply not enough professors, teaching assistants, classes or spaces, and the system of waitlists and course-action forms pits student against student as we fight to fulfill our majors. This strain also presents itself throughout our academic careers as we encounter overtaxed advisors. The most bright and promising non-Echols student can spend four years at this university and never hear the words "Harrison Research Grant" or "Center for Undergraduate Excellence." While a modicum of personal initiative is indeed required from students, it rings more than a little elitist that Echols students are immersed in and guided through this world of opportunity from the moment they arrive on Grounds, while the rest of students are assigned an overburdened advisor in a department often unrelated to their interests.
Perhaps this would not be such an injustice if the University were not one of the most competitive schools in the nation. If we were just another public school struggling to convince the best and brightest of the in-state pool to stay in-state, the impressive perks of our honors program would have a real place on our campus. But there are no "non-honors" students at the University. We don't need the Echols program to attract the best minds and resumés, because they're already applying. Of the early decision class of 2009 alone, 87 percent were ranked in the top 10 percent of their graduating classes, and the median SAT range stretched from 1270 to 1410. Part of the mission of the Echols program, according to its Web site, is "to draw students who might not otherwise apply to or attend the University." But for the few students that the University might lose to the Ivy League each year without the Echols program, it could surely find qualified replacements among the more than approximately 15,000 students that apply each year.
There is, to be sure, a streak of sour grapes that runs through the grumblings of "average" students about the Echols program, this column included. It is enormously frustrating to have worked so hard during high school in order to pay thousands of dollars in tuition to work even harder at the University, only to see a course one needs one's final semester fill up with a select group of first years, or to struggle fruitlessly for the kind of advising and intellectual opportunity that is provided without question to that same select group -- in short, to be treated like a second-class student. The Echols program prides itself on fostering the academic achievement of 850 outstanding students, a goal which it consistently realizes. Yet it also fosters inequality and discontent throughout the rest of the University, creating an academic aristocracy at the expense of the "lower class" of intellectuals.
The change in the stewardship of the Echols program provides the University with an opportunity to reevaluate this elitist system. The rest of the student body is waiting. What would Mr. Jefferson do?
Katie Cristol's column appears Mondays in The Cavalier Daily. She can be reached at kcristol@cavalierdaily.com.
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