Faculty advisors recently pulled the plug on financial and administrative support for a documentary on Hopkins student life after miscommunications between the project's organizers and their advisors.
Before the project proposal was submitted, it had the verbal support of faculty members as a documentary exploration of student life at Hopkins. But after the project was promoted as a potential MTV pilot film by its creators - seniors Abby Grossman and Ed Kiernan and junior Andy Moskowitz -- the University withdrew its support.
Grossman and Moskowitz, both Woodrow Wilson Research Fellows, were not allowed to use their research stipends for the film, since faculty members said their project proposal was not in keeping with the goals of the Woodrow Wilson program.
"The academic and intellectual validity [of Woodrow Wilson research projects] has to have the support of a faculty member and it has to be both academically and intellectually viable," said Susan Bacon, coordinator of academic programs for the School of Arts and Sciences. "[This project] was not clearly research [and] the faculty members were not in support of it."
Controversy erupted after Grossman's fellowship sponsor, Writing Seminars professor Tristan Davies, received a copy of the group's project proposal. Davies and Grossman both said that they had discussed cursory ideas for the project during a meeting one-month prior to the release of the final proposal. The completed proposal, however, was not sent to Davies until after the students had submitted their proposal to the Woodrow Wilson advisors and had begun film production.
"We didn't try to circumvent Tristan," said Kiernan. "We submitted the proposal straight to [the Woodrow Wilson advisors] because we thought it was okay with Tristan."
Though both said that they believed the project had Davies' approval, both Kiernan and Grossman admitted that this assumption was one of their biggest mistakes.
The Woodrow Wilson Fellowships, 20 of which are awarded each year, consist of a four-year research project funded by a stipend of $10,000. Fellows do not have access to their funding until they have obtained ap proval for future expenses from both their faculty sponsor and the Associate Dean of Academic Affairs, Steven R. David. They are then reimbursed based on this prior approval.
"If there is any concern that a student is falling behind or not keeping up with the goals of the program, we discuss it with them and meet with their faculty mentors," said Bacon. "We try to pay as close attention as we can without interfering."
The discrepancy between the stated academic goals of the project and its subsequent promotion as an MTV pilot were of great concern to the faculty advisors and led to the decision that Woodrow Wilson funding would not be allowed.
"There was a lot of miscommunication about what was okay and what was not okay," said Moskowitz, who left the project after they were told the idea was unacceptable, "especially on the nature of the pilot as an MTV show."
Moskowitz had already bought a video camera for separate Wilson research and was going to help film the lock-in, which had been scheduled for April 4.
Although Grossman and Kiernan promoted the documentary as a potential MTV pilot, they maintained that the basic idea of the project was not to create another Real World, hyper-commercialized reality TV show.
"The goal [of the film] was to take a realistic look at student life," said Kiernan. Kiernan and Grossman decided to explore the aspects of student life, including relationships, communication, drugs and sexuality, in the context of a lock-in.
"The unique part of it is we are college students, and we thought we could provide a better view of student life than what's out there," said Grossman. "It really was something more academic ... but it hurt us in a way, because we put a commercial spin on it."
Davies, the key to Grossman's Wilson funding, said that he would not have supported the project as it was represented in the students' proposal, or as it was described in the March 27 issue of the News-Letter.
The idea of a lock-in involving both alcohol and forced social interaction was unacceptable to Davies and other administrators, as well as another of Grossman's faculty mentors, Writing Seminars Professor John Astin.
Astin said that he would not have approved the project as it was represented in the News-Letter, or as it was promoted by the students as an MTV pilot.
"The basic project was not scandalous...it is a good project and deserves to be done," he said.
The article in the News-Letter beared "no resemblance to the project" Astin had originally supported, and he "would never have authorized or approved" the project as it was described in the article. He added that, to the best of his knowledge, the students' ideas remained consistent but they simply made some mistakes along the way.
The commercialization of the students' project undermined their academic goals, said Davies.
"They might have had a good idea deep down," he said, but with the project's promotion as an MTV pilot, "they lost all legitimacy."
"Our proposal itself was not very well written ... it misrepresented our project [and] that was completely our fault," said Kiernan. Kiernan and Grossman decided not to go ahead without the school's approval, and they are currently rethinking their project.
"We want to make it okay for Hopkins. We won't go ahead if they're not happy," Kiernan said.
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