* Stress the importance of a student's development over three years rather than his achievements or failures after one;

* Encourage as far as possible cooperative work among first-year students and a decrease in the level of tension;

* Create a system of feedback which will provide substantially more information on our progress without the awesome penalties which now exist; and

* Break down the monolithic quality of our education by encouraging individual and small-group research and writing.

To implement these goals, we propose the following:

* Periodic evaluation of students performance throughout the first year.

* More complete communication to students of professors' evaluations of first-year exams.

* Notation on transcripts at the end of the first year of either "pass" or "fail" in each course.

* A similar system of evaluation in the second and third years.

The considerations which motivated this proposal might well lead to a reassessment of other aspects of the first year.

Under the current grading system; some professors use small sections to go deeper into material covered in class, but warn students they will be graded on a different curve than other members of the section. Other professors inform students that the small section will not discuss material covered in class, since that would give members of the small section an advantage in taking the final exam. If the proposed system of evaluation were adopted, professors might want to reapraise the use to which they now put small sections. Some might want to replace small sections in whole or in part with the small groups suggested above, in which students would work much more closely with each other with less direction from the professor.

With a first-year class one-third the size of Harvard's, Yale has more than twice as many teaching fellows. While financial limitations would obviously be a problem, some thought should be given to the hiring of recent graduates to supervise group work and evaluate written work of first-year students.

While many, perhaps most, professors believe that a final exam is indispensable for aiding a student in pulling together a course, some professors, under the proposed system, might wish to consider whether in certani courses a paper or take-home exam would be a more effective means.

The faculty might consider whether some release from the burdens of the current six-course load in the second semester should be given to students who undertake major individual research on their own. Supervision of such research would be facilitated through hiring of more teaching fellows and greater use of upperclass students.

We believe that students in the second and third year have much to contribute to first-year students. But the energies and abilities of upperclass students are not now utilized as extensively as possible, and the lack of contact with upperclass students contributes to the isolation that many students feel in the first year. Through an increase in the functions and membership of the Board of Student Advisors--or the creation of a new organization--upperclass students might be encouraged to participate on a voluntary basis in evaluating and advising first-year students.