Due to a printing error, the following article was not printed in its entirety in yesterday's edition.

Heroes. Michelangelo. Shakespeare. Some courses are so large and famous that they need no numbers or descriptions, just names. For example, the largest class on campus last semester: Professor of Government Michael J. Sandel's Moral Reasoning 22--a.k.a. "Justice."

But as the 930 students, 24 teaching fellows and one professor found out, with fame and size come complications for all involved. While many say the class was enjoyable, the immense enrollment at times had popular but inevitable side effects.

Harsh Grading?

Weeks before students handed in their first Justice papers in October, teaching fellows already knew how many students would receive the coveted A's or dreaded C's.

Or at the very least, they Knew how many should.

Because of the Class's huge enrollment, the evaluation of Justice's first papers was based on a target distribution of grades: 15 percent of the class should receive an A- or better, 20 percent a B+, 25 percent a B, 25 percent a B- and 15 percent a C+ or less, according to several of the Course's TFs.

The target distribution is based on the assumption that students' performances improve during the semester and that the final grades are inevitably higher, Sandel says.

And teaching fellows say the distribution is intended to ensure grading equity between the 49 sections of course whose enrollment has increased exponentially since it began 13 years ago as a 100-person government class in Boylston Hall.

But although grade distributions are not uncommon in large classes, several Justice students are concerned that the grading guidelines may unfairlydictate evaluation of their papers, exams andsection participation.

The question, they say, boils down to oneSandel has asked in his very lectures: Which ismore important, Aristotle's good or Kant'sright--the good for the whole class to have evenlydistributed grades or the right of the individualstudents to be evaluated independently of a curve.

Shara Cottam '94, who took Justice lastsemester, appears to agree with Kant. She ways shethought the grade distribution was unfair, despiteits reliance on the assumption that section have arandom composition.

"It put a lot of pressure on the class," Cottamsays. "There was a lot of competition within thesection. It was certainly not a very comfortableenvironment."

Cottam says her section was informed of thegrade distribution, but several other students saythey were not aware of the precise gradingparameters.

"I definitely think they should have told us,"Marc R. Talusan '97 says. "The only thing my TFtold me is that they make sure that some TFsaren't lax and others aren't too strict."

"It is a difficult system to distribute withina section, because there are sections with smarterpeople," Talusan adds.