Just two brief comments on The Chronicle's editorial entitled "High-Speed Merger?" regarding the task force to restructure our biology program. First, in 1996, as you know, an internal task force-including five members from the botany and zoology departments-deliberated for a year and unanimously concluded that a merger was, intellectually and structurally, the best course to adopt. This past year, an external review of the program by nationally known experts emphatically and unanimously endorsed the same conclusion. For us not to proceed with the current task force would be an act of procrastination well worthy of The Chronicle's criticism. To proceed with it seems both orderly and deliberate.
Second, your editorial assumes that there has been systematic neglect of the facilities in the biology program. As one example, between 1991 and 1993, we spent more than $4 million upgrading the core of the Biological Sciences Building. We also built a whole new Developmental, Cellular and Molecular Biology facility in the Levine Science Research Center and in a series of teaching facilities and labs. There remains much work to be done on facilities, and that is a top priority during our long-range planning process, but it is important not to ignore or be insensitive to what has already been done.
William Chafe
Dean of Trinity College
Berndt Mueller
Dean of natural sciences
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