Gerald Wootten III ‘05, left, listens as Gopal Sarma ‘05 chats about the curricular review in Kirkland yesterday.

A small collection of students gathered at the Kirkland House Senior Common Room last night to discuss the core curriculum and potential changes in the College calendar with the administrators who are leading the College’s curricular review.

In the first of 12 open meetings that will take place this spring, the 15 students sat to talk with Dean of the College Benedict H. Gross ’71 and Associate Dean of the College Jeffrey Wolcowitz, two of the three top administrators charged with the oversight of the review.

The core curriculum and the changes to the college calendar have been the focal issues of meetings of the curricular review committees in recent months, but students also raised concerns about language citations, advising and excessive pressures on first-year students.

The conversation started off slowly as students trickled in with trays of food and voiced their concerns with some hesitation.

Former Kirkland House Committee (HoCo) Chair Sloan J. Eddleston ’04 kicked off the meeting on a light note.

“I guess the first thing I’d say is that I don’t like the Lit B core,” he said.

Eddleston’s comment sparked a 20 minute-long discussion of the core curriculum, whose merits have been debated among both students and professors at the curricular review committee.

“The usual expression I hear about the core is that I love all the courses in the core, but I hate the core, which I usually interpret as I hate manipulating all of the regulations of the core...but in the process of manipulating the core I get a few good classes,” Gross said.

Several students said they felt core courses tended to be considered a a low priority by classmates.

“Everybody in core classes is going to be non-concentrators, or people who don’t care,” said Gopal Sarma ’05, a math concentrator. “I think that should never be the case with courses you take in college.”

Some expressed interest in a system of distribution requirements, similar to those in place at Yale and Princeton, in which students can choose to take departmental courses or special core curriculum courses.

But Gross pointed out that there are administrative difficulties in the implementation of that kind of curriculum.

Other concerns students raised included teaching fellow quality—the group concurred that too many don’t speak English—and student-faculty interaction, which Gross called a “culture of mutual avoidance.”

Wolcowitz, who now manages the curricular review and has over a decade of experience with curricular administration, raised the question of choosing concentrations later, or requiring 10 core classes with greater distribution and flexibility.

“Can we come up with a system that would generate the right kinds of courses, courses that departments would respect and continue to put their best professors forward to teach?” he asked.