Word: pass-fail
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...undoubtedly swayed by the single strongest argument for pass-fail which has been constantly repeated during the two-year debate. David Riesman '31, Henry Ford II Professor of Social Science, states it best: "Most students here take too many courses. They chop their emotional energies into too many little bits. We should be encouraging students to play from weakness instead of strength, but the system here puts pressure on the student not to extend himself in areas where he's awkward because he fears not doing brilliantly...
...addition, there were some new twists to the case for pass-fail this year. Cynics would argue that Harvard was nudged into action by Yale's new pass-fail and the publicity that surounded it. The CEP vote to approve pass-fail in principle came less than a week after the Yale Faculty switched that college's grading to four categories: fail, pass, high pass, and honors...
...more likely that the pass-fail plan won approval because Faculty think it is what students want. The HPC, by concentrating on this one question, won over a Faculty that could have gone either way. An indifferent Faculty member who could not think of a good reason for rejecting the plan was willing to try the experiment...
...chief engineer of this modest student power coup is Norr, who has worked on pass-fail through every phase of its tangled history. He was a member of the 1966-67 HPC which hit upon the idea one spring afternoon of combining its desire for a free fifth course and pass-fail into one package proposal...
...fifth course pass-fail plan never appealed to Norr or Riesman, then one of the three Faculty HPC members. They argued that it was little more than a dressed up form of auditing and would put psychological pressure on students to increase their course load to five. Norr toyed with the idea of filing a minority report to the CEP. But the HPC traditionally hammers out its differences in closed meetings and then presents a united front when it arrives at a recommendation. So Norr decided to give no hint of the HPC's internal dissension...