The early 1970s were a turbulent time at Brown, as they were on other college campuses. Protests against the Vietnam War and debate about race relations and curricular reform dominated the campus.
In the middle of such social unrest, students producing the 1972 edition of the University yearbook, Liber Brunensis, struggled to look back at their college years. Sensing their role in the University's community as more than temporary in a time of great change, staff members saw the opportunity to look ahead.
"We were re-evaluating how the academic experience was relevant to the world outside of Brown as well as how the experience on campus could be relevant to new modes of learning," said Stephen Glassman '72.
Convinced that students should be included in both campus and curricular design, Glassman had joined the first Campus Planning Committee with roommate and then-Liber editor Ken Weiner '72.
After administrators responded unenthusiastically to the CPC's campus plan, Weiner and Glassman realized the 1972 Liber would provide a fitting forum for their ideas.
Weiner wrote the "Overall Plan for Brown in 2000," and both he and Glassman, who had just been accepted to study architecture at Yale, did the accompanying 14 pages of drawings.
Rather than doodling a fanciful plan, Glassman and Weiner put forth an earnest vision of an integrated and innovative campus that would reflect the principles of the recently adopted New Curriculum.
"Brown's physical campus is a habitat for an educational system, so everything from student housing to the overall campus and where different functions are placed facilitates individuals' ability to relate to each other and resources of learning," Weiner said. "If a campus does not function as a healthy habitat for its inhabitants, it's not going to be able to promote and achieve its educational mission."
Unifying the campus after Brown's 1970 merger with Pembroke College presented a challenge; imposing and divisive buildings already in the works, such as the Sciences Library and Bio-Medical Center, didn't help. Instead of viewing the physical campus as a series of independent structures, Weiner hoped green spaces and paths would link different parts of the campus and reflect Brown's new interdisciplinary approach to education.
His plan called for expanding the Main Green and building a humanities center on Brown Street behind Rhode Island Hall and a music center on the corner of Meeting and Thayer streets. Weiner hoped that giving the arts facilities a central location would enhance their function as cultural mixing centers. Eight four-story housing units with shops on the first floor were proposed on either side of a tree-lined mall along Charlesfield Street.
"One of the fundamental precepts of a healthy community is achieving connectivity," Weiner said. "You have to connect these parts of the campus or else you've really vulcanized it."
The Liber's depiction of a green, pedestrian-filled College Hill with submerged parking and electric shuttle buggies is far from today's reality. Instead, the campus has become denser and more fragmented, Weiner and Glassman agreed.
"Many buildings seem like architectural examples of internalized structure, not ones that communicate across the axis of the campus," Glassman said. "Ongoing building has been too disconnected and not well-linked or harmonious."
An acclaimed architect, Glassman currently focuses on civil rights as chair of the Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission. Although he has participated in some alumni activities, his connection to Brown has diminished in recent years. Looking ahead, Glassman said the University should consider "leap-frogging instead of just swallowing up other areas of Providence." Revamping Thayer Street and eradicating the SciLi also figured into his hypothetical agenda.
Weiner pursued environmental policy as an advisor to the Carter and Ford presidential administrations and later focused in environmental law.
In the future, he hopes the University will improve provide adequate humanities facilities and improve housing. The Liber proposed modular housing blocks, hovercraft dorm rooms and a "plug-in" college with "utility cores" where buildings can spring up as needed; those things now seem unlikely.
But the 1972 plan anticipated an urban renewal in downtown Providence, and the planned Walk between Lincoln Field and Pembroke could easily have been taken from the 1972 drawings. Current initiatives to foster community - the campus region plan and Brown University Community Council - suggest the integrated environment Weiner and Glassman hoped for remains a goal.
Weiner and Glassman's vision was part of what they understood to be a complete restructuring of the University that would not stop after the New Curriculum. But the radical wave of change halted soon after their graduation. Although racial diversity continued to increase over the years, the New Curriculum remains "new" after nearly four decades. Some tenets of the curriculum, such as the Modes of Thought courses that inspired Weiner and Glassman, were never fully realized.
"My greatest and continuing disappointment is that the University has not been able to realize and truly support interdisciplinary work because of the disincentives built into department structure (and) the inherent structural problems," Weiner said.
Still, Weiner said it is not too late for the University to embrace the greener aspects of their vision. "I don't think (space and expense) are adequate excuses because the value achieved by accomplishing this far outweighs those," he said. "It's fundamental to the character of the University, and what price do you put on that?"
