The Committee on Educational Policy has voted to reject a Social Sciences 125 petition that grading requirements be removed from the course.
In a letter dated March 26 to Arthur MacEwan, head sectionman for the course, Edward T. Wilcox, director of the program of General Education, wrote that "the CEP felt that the Faculty must maintain its responsibility for the certification of the A.B. degree and that some measure of comparative performance is necessary in order to make this certification possible." The letter also says that "academic performance which is not measured against a uniform standard can quickly deteriorate to a system of personal patronage."
MacEwan announced the CEP's decision to the members of Soc Sci 125 at a course meeting yesterday. The staff of the course discussed alternative responses to the letter at a regularly scheduled meeting last night. They came to no decision, MacEwan said, but will continue the discussion in section meetings.
If the CEP had voted to support the Soc Sci 125 proposal that grades for the course be abolished, the entire Faculty would then have had to vote on it. MacEwan said that the course staff could still take the proposal of the Faculty. He added, however, "the Faculty might be no easier to convince than the segment of it represented by the CEP."
MacEwan said he thought the purpose had already been served in part, since the petition had aroused general interested in the issue of grading.
Jerome Kagan, professor of Developmental Psychology and a member of the CEP, said yesterday that the Soc Sci 125 petition "was not on rational or intellectual grounds a very strong case." Kagan said, "The pressure of evalution helps some students to come to insights which they wouldn't have done." He added that each year a number of students thank him for his exams.
The Soc Sci 125 petition for the abolition of grades states that "grades promote acquiescence and conformity among students and exempt teachers from the necessity of being relevant, interesting and well prepared in their classes." The entire enrollment of the course endorsed the proposal that grades be abolished.
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