After the meeting, Curry sent an e-mail to Crimson Key members, calling the proposed changes “drastic,” and saying they were “hatched without our input.”

Cutting Down the Core

One fewer Core Curriculum requirement greet students this fall, and many of them will get to choose which one it is.

Three months after the Faculty of Arts and Sciences voted unanimously to roll back the number of required Core courses from eight to seven, the Core office quietly released its plans this summer to determine which concentrations are exempt from which core areas.

The full list of exemptions is posted on the Core curriculum website. Although the website originally gave the impression that the new exemptions apply only to the class of 2006, they in fact apply to all current students.

Students who have already taken a Core course in an area from which they are exempt have little recourse.

Dean of the College Harry R. Lewis ’68 said exceptions would likely be made only for joint concentrators who want to take an exemption from their secondary field.

More choices for students complicates recordkeeping for the registrar.

Students will fill out forms at registration today to choose which exemption they want to take.

The form would provide a non-binding way to help the registrar keep track of which requirements a student still needs to fulfill.

Development Stalls

Five-year-old negotiations between Harvard and Cambridge over the University’s planned government center came to a screeching halt in July.

Harvard representatives said in July that they were willing to scrap what they had often described as the project’s “centerpiece”—a tunnel to connect the two buildings, which is the only piece lacking official permission—in order to leave the negotiations behind and begin construction on the Center for Government and International Studies (CGIS).

While Harvard officials say they have looked into what they would need to do to build a tunnel-less CGIS, Harvard officials declined to say that they would be withdrawing the application for the tunnel.

Additionally, Harvard gave up its three-year-old fight to build a modern art museum on the Charles River.