Observing the playground bullies.

I turned to a favourite Australian site for a sideways take on the above--at www.archsoc.com/kcas/researchinternational.html. This is the choleric but very funny site of the Key Centre for Architectural Sociology aka former Sydney University architecture school sociologist Garry Stevens. He has a piece on his site about the contretemps and offers an explanation as to 'why they did it now and why their halfwit colleagues at the RAIA are very, very worried'. He argues (remember he's a sociologist and takes a sociologist's stance) that the wrinklies making up the initial AAA membership are actually attempting to hang on to the high ground by establishing an exclusive club of, in their own words, 'the most highly skilled and recognized architects in the country'. Sounds a reasonable proposition. Garry has recently run a study which 'attempts to measure the research cultures of the English-speaking world's architecture schools'. The research methodology seems utterly sound and the results are Princeton at number two, Cambridge at six and the Bartlett at 18. Don't care for the latter rating, but then I'm a Bartlett boy. Check out Garry's site yourself--but not if you are by nature sensitive, pompous or easily offended.