Today, grade inflation is not race related and Black students do not receive more lenient grades than do other students, Mansfield said.

"I wasn't making a remark about right now but a historical remark," Mansfield said. "I rather think [Black students] do not get inflated grades."

Though much of the question-and-answer session following the panel discussion involved Mansfield's previous remarks, organizers said the Harvard Political Union planned the panel before the events of the past week.

Panel moderator Alvin I. Bragg Jr 195, the vice-president of the Black Students' Association and chair of the political union, asked participants to concentrate on the issues of the ideal mean grade and on the grading discrepancy between the natural sciences and the humanities.

Much of the debate focused on whether a policy of grade deflation would benefit of harm Harvard students.

Mansfield called overall inflation a process of "debasing the currency" in academics. "It's unjust. It buries and obscures necessary distinctions, of academic judgment," he said.

"It's true that grades are not the be-all and end-all, but grades are important to us in our community. Being a student to us means being a good student," Mansfield said.

Dianne Reeder '93, editor emeritus of The Harvard Salient, said students would benefit from grade deflation.

"In some departments. A stands for average. It is literally impossible to earn an above-average grade," she said. "A C from Harvard should mean intelligent work."

Reeder said lower grades would not hurt students applying to jobs and graduate programs. If we adopted a policy that ended grade inflation." She said, "the world would know."

But Sean M. Becker '94, co-chair of the Undergraduate Council's Academics Committee, said that grade deflation would have serious negative effects.

"Over the past 25 years, grades have gone up in every single institution." Becker said. "We are in the same job pool with those students whose grades have been artificially inflated,". he said.

Becker argued for more professorial involvement in the grading process instead of overall grade deflation.

Grade deflation "will create a more stressful, competitive environment in which we are competing as much for grades, for grades' sake, as for learning for knowledge's sake," Becker said