Pols Sits it Out

Last week we ran a story on overcrowding in Pols 111. Salient has since contacted Les Cleveland, the lecturer in charge of the course, to find out what is being done.

Cleveland listed three possible courses of action. The first, and most desirable, was to institute another lecture session at the same time as the main one, 10 - 11 am. This would have meant asking someone else in the department to immediately prepare him/herself to teach the course — a difficult but not insurmountable problem. However it would also have meant finding another lecture theatre in a peak lecture hour, and this was expected to be almost impossible.

The second option was to introduce closed circuit television monitoring. The difficulty here is that Victoria is very poorly endowed with such facilities. In addition, closed circuit teaching is not a very satisfactory method.

The third option, and the one adopted, was to introduce another lecture session at a different time, 4—5 pm. At present it seems that this session is not being particularly well attended. Celveland attaches some blame to the students for this, suggesting they are loath to change to the later time because of a preference for getting lectures over with early in the day. It must be pointed out in answer to this that many students are now committed to their timetables and may not be able to change without avoiding a clash.

Cleveland gives some interesting reasons for the situation developing in the first place. The, major one, according to him, is the recently enforced Commerce faculty restrictions which are forcing a spill-over into Political Studeis courses. He claims there has been "bad planning by the Commerce Faculty" and that the Registry has been releasing misleading information.

In the light of further restrictions proposed by the Commerce faculty (see accompanying story) one can only be concerned about the development of this trend. How much liaison is there between departments over such issues? How much do some departments keep others in the dark about developments directly affecting the latter?

The converse situation which might well be looked on as the most efficient remedy, is even more worrying: how widespread is the practice of farming students around the departments becoming?

Salient will bo looking for answers to these questions, but in the meantime students in the Pols 111 class might well care to send in their comments on the position as it affects them.

Simon Wilson