Sarah Lawrence is a classless community for the very rich. Although its tuition is prohibitively high ($2950 a year) and it has few scholarships, the college goes beyond the acknowledged socialism of most educational communities (Harvard, for example, boasts of socialized medicine and room adjustments fees).

For Sarah Lawrence has eliminated status. All faculty members are teachers--there is no professional hierarchy, no political cock-fight for tenure The community recognizes no distinction of age, clubs, or academic discipline--indeed there are no clubs, and "field of concentration" is a definition only loosely applied. And above all, Sarah Lawrence has dispensed with the currency of college life: there are no grades.

Impressed by this sense of perfect equality, writer Harvey Swados commented that "in time Sarah Lawrence girls become so much a part of the community that it is impossible to detect a girl's background. I can no longer tell who is rich and who is poor, or even who is black and who is white." Significantly enough, Swados made this comment with complete case to the reporters, and a group of three Sarah Lawrence girls which included a very light negress.

The intent of the classless community is not homogeneity, but individuality, and a Sarah Lawrence education is ideally focussed on the specific student. Each girl selects her Oxford-like advisor or "don", who has sole authority to counsel her, and criticize her program. Students take three courses a year, and of the 12 courses throughout the four years, all but two follow the unique format devised 30 years ago by Constance Warren, the school's first president.

Teachers give whatever courses they like, (there are over 200) and enrollment for each course may not exceed 15. The class meets once a week for either an hour or 90 minutes. In addition, each student has a bi-weekly half hour "conference" with the course instructor, during which they discuss some topic suggested by the course, and about which the student will write a comprehensive course paper.

Papers are not graded. Instead the student's work is discussed in depth, and at the end of each term the instructor prepares a short report, a critical evaluation of the student's performance.

Experiment with Lectures

In the last few years the college has experimented with lecture courses, but these, too, are small by Harvard standards, averaging about 35 students. Like the seminars, lectures are based as much as possible on the Socratic method of discussion.

Although lectures were conceived initially as a method of keeping pace with an expanding student population, Paul L. Ward, President of Sarah Lawrence since 1960, finds a theoretical justification for them. "For the presentation of some material, a lecture course can be exceedingly exciting, and cover areas which simply cannot be explored in discussion groups," said Ward who was both a student and an instructor at Harvard.

But Ward emphasized the importance of seminars as well. "I think that basic history, as I understand it, is much better taught in sections," Ward explained. "For example, I think a Soc. Sci. 1-type lecture survey course is for the birds.

"But once the student has the basic fundamentals in a field, then I think she might well profit from a lecture course."

Major Transition

Sarah Lawrence's educational policy is unquestionably undergoing a major transition. An expanding student body and its changing relationship to the world outside of Bronxville have made it impossible for the school to remain entirely constant to its original ideals.

A chief fighter for the traditional, "experimental" Sarah Lawrence approach is Maurice S. Friedman, a large, soft, heavy-set philosophy teacher with an unflinching faith in Martin Buber. Friedman was delighted to discuss the educational philosophy which for him has become almost a religion.

As he spoke we scanned his dimly lit fourth floor conference room. Perhaps at one time the room was part of an attic, dusty, stale, and dead. But as Friedman has decorated it, the room is almost oppressive in its humanity. At odd corners of the room are numerous animals; each comes as a surprise. Swinging from the sloppy bookshelf is a toy monkey. A pink trojan horse and grey kitten sit on the desk. Also on the desk stands a willow plant, to which is attached a single large, yellow bee. And a gaint green cotton frog is perched on the magazine table.