According to Talusan, readers currently select the theses they will read from a list of titles and short abstracts submitted many weeks before the actual thesis is due.

"You're basically picking based on a thesis title, which obviously has many inherent flaws," Talusan said.

"It can happen that a Faculty member thinks, 'I can tell this is going to be fluffy and awful, so let me take this and tell them how awful it is,'" Wood said.

Talusan said one of his graders read the thesis despite having said that he was uncomfortable doing so.

"The person who wrote my recommendation said [in the comments] that he was not certain whether he was qualified to read the thesis," he said.

Talusan also said one grader penalized him for "certain points that had already been approved in the prospectus."

"I think that in those particular cases, there has to be an appeals process," he said.

Petition organizers said they are disenchanted with a department that is unresponsive to their concerns.

"I get a sense that undergrads in the English department are kind of an irritation," Wood said.

Julie C. Kim '97, also a petition organizer, said that while Faculty members in the department are "generally very sympathetic to students on an individual basis...the department, as an organization...seems to be wanting in some of that concern."

The petition urges the department to establish a discussion group, composed of students and Faculty, to address student concerns and conduct a survey of English concentrators.

Petition organizers said they do not expect the department to implement their suggestions about the general exam or thesis grading immediately.

"We do expect the department to commit in some real way to improving communication among Faculty, administrators and students," Kim said