Word: pass-fail
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...questions--liberalizing the rules for taking a free fifth course, and experimenting with ungraded courses as were being tried at Princeton and Brown. Someone, on one of those Friday afternoons, suggested combining the two ideas in a proposal to allow students to take a free fifth course on a pass-fail basis. This combination, some members maintain, was the first mistake...
Time ran out last spring, and the committee began the year with the same question: what to do about the fifth course policy, and what to do about pass-fail. Encouraged by Dean Monro, and tired of going over the same ground again and again, the committee wrote the framework of a pass-fail fifth course proposal and presented it to the Faculty's Committee on Educational Policy for approval and details. Acceptance by the CEP would mean that Faculty approval was virtually certain. With Monro presenting the HPC's case, the CEP accepted the proposal and filled...
Meanwhile, the fall term ended and a new HPC took office. Monro suggested that the CEP send its pass-fail proposal, in final form and ready for a Faculty vote, back to the new HPC for its approval. "I expected that the HPC would approve it and that we'd be sailing right along," recalls Monro, who watched "in distress" as the new HPC members decided that the proposal did not give pass-fail the flexibility they hoped it would. For fear of arousing the students' resentment, Monro said little as the new committee disowned the proposal and wrote...
...That was my second mistake," Monro says now. "First I should have let it go through the CEP without sending it back to the HPC. The Faculty would have voted it without hesitation and from there we could have gone on to a four-course pass-fail in a few years. And then I should have made a firm speech to the HPC, but I didn't want them to look like a rubber stamp...
...long-range effect of the pass-fail mess, and the underlying problems that caused it, will become clearer next year. Former chairman Trosper is more optimistic than Monro. "People have short memories," he has said, noting that the Faculty might be impressed by the HPC's willingness and ability to rethink a position thoroughly. But aside from prestige, another unfortunate consequence of the year-long hassle with pass-fail was the opportunity cost: the HPC did little else...