To the Editors of the CRIMSON:

The attempt of Mary Littlefield '71 and Ernie Brooks '71 to organize a boycott of next Tuesday's English Junior Examination (as reported in Friday's CRIMSON) deserves a brief comment.

Last February, the Department accepted unanimously most of the recommendations of a joint faculty-student committee to change the requirements of the Junior Examination, Accordingly, students who have already passed course examinations in the Bible. Shakespear. Milton, and Chaucer, or are currently enrolled in such courses, no longer need to be reexamined on this material. In order to give instant relief to the present junior class, these changes were made effective this year.

The Department decided not to act at this time on the proposal that tutorial work be used to satisfy the existing requirements of the Junior Examination. Many members of the Department were reluctant to bind junior tutorial into the Shakepeare and Bible requirement because junior tutorials would then often have a predetermined subject matter and thus sacrifice the individual freedom and flexibility which, many of us feel, is the unique value of the tutorial enterprise. The whole question of the Bible. Shakepeare, and junior author requirements will now be reviewed along with the entire English curriculum by the new faculty-student committee of which Professor Kiely is chairman.

Miss Littlefield and Mr. Brooks are free to disagree with this reasoning and to make their dissent and their constructive views heard. For them to urge, however, a boycott of the examination on the grounds that many students have been exempted from parts or all of the exam for "arbitrary" reasons seems to be a rather arbitrary exercise of the right to express negative views.

Director of Undergraduate Studies in English