The following recommendation was made by the president and administrative staff of Grove College, a private institution, to the college's governing committee."Recently, there have been discussions about ending Grove College's century-old tradition of all-

The board and the president of an all-female private institution send a recommendation to the governing committee to continue and maintain the female educational system they already have in spite the recommendations of the faculty members. They support their opinion mainly in data from surveys and the alumnae benefactors of the school. a series of questions rise from this recommendation which are shown below.

The president of the College in his letter is falling into the group fallacy. He indicates in his letter that both the current students and the alumnae of the College are opposing this recommendation and he gives some data as facts that support his opinion. The statistics indicating that about half of the alumnae are opposed to coeducation although he does not tell how many students were questioned. Therefore, a question should be made in order to ask how many students participated in these surveys both for the current and the alumnae students in order to see if the sample in the surveys is representative or not. If the statistics from the survey are near the ones provided then the recommendation is valid and well based if not the board should definitely reconsider its decision.

The author of the letter also uses the data extracted from the surveys but he falls to take into account the fact that all of these students are females and they may be biased towards a mixed educational system because for the currents students they are accustomed to it and for the alumnae because they already finished the college this way. Thus, we should ask the administrative board to conduct a new survey that will involve both men and women from the local area asking whether they want coeduacation or not. Again the new survey will indicate whether or not the reccomendation is based on unbiased and untainted data.

The board and the president trying to support their decision make a prediction based on a weak analogy that by maintaining the same situation and not going into a coeducational system the college will have more benefacors as alumnae will continue to support it financially. What about male benefactors for example who are clearly kept away from supporting the school financially by maintaining it all female. Therefore the president should answer whether it is more profitable for the college to have solely female contributors than both male and female. If the answer is in favor of option B then the board should change its decision and move into a coeducational system.

To sum up, in its letter the board and the president use some data and make some predictions in order to support their decision that the coeducational system in Grove College will not be as beneficial as the system that is already in use. In this essay we tried to demonstrate the fallacies the board makes in its letter and the questions that have risen by those fallacies. Whether or not this age old tradition will be able to support the school financially in these modern times it remains to be seen.