Graduate students in the Sociology department are organizing a task force to challenge the department faculty's decision to tighten deadlines for oral examinations and thesis prospectuses.

The new rules require graduate students in the department to complete their oral examinations and perspectuses by the beginning of their third year of study, or suffer a reduction in teaching hours.

One graduate student said yesterday that by reducing teaching hours, the department will effectively cut down graduate student's income, and encourage them to leave.

Teeth

Theda Skocpol, chairman of the Sociology Department's committee on higher degrees, said yesterday the faculty decided to enforce the deadlines strictly because of University pressure to limit graduate enrollment in each department.

In the past, students have stayed on in Sociology for up to seven years, and now they will have to leave after five, she said.

Reorganize

Students in their second and third graduate years of Sociology will have to reorganize their schedules to meet the regulations by next September.

Students who have been here for more than three years will not be affected by the ruling, Skocpol said.

Nearly half of the approximately 60 Sociology graduate students have said they will support an effort to protest the deadlines, one member of the task force said yesterday.

Two preliminary committee meetings have focused on resolving the problems of departmental funding and advising, he added.

Protest

David Karen, graduate student coordinator of the Sociology Department, said yesterday the task force hopes to organize students and confront the department's decision to enforce deadlines.

"When I entered graduate school students could stay seven years. One of the reasons Sociology students came to Harvard was for that independence--being able to learn languages in Europe, and work in government jobs. Now that's over," Thomas H. Davenport, graduate student representative to departmental meetings, said yesterday.

Davenport said he feels the philosophical issue behind the decision was the department's feeling that graduate students lack direction. "They slap on regulations," he said, "when we really need advisors."

Directionless

The new requirement is an attempt to hurry students through the department without looking at why they're there for so long, Davenport said. "We're not lazy," he said, adding that the department's structure does not give students adequate direction.