A calendar proposal that would move first-semester exams before winter break received a mixed response at yesterday’s meeting of the Faculty Council, members who attended said.

The discussion was the first formal chance for Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) professors to review the proposal, released Monday, which would require students to begin classes immediately after Labor Day and enable FAS to add a month-long academic term in January.

Professor of the History of Science Everett I. Mendelsohn, a Faculty Council member, said that professors raised a number of concerns in response to the report by the University Committee on Calendar Reform, which was charged with synchronizing school calendars across Harvard.

“There was no enthusiastic support for the program,” Mendelsohn said.

“There was no real resolution,” said Baird Professor of Science Gary J. Feldman, a Council member who said that concerns about the early start date and a potential decrease in teaching time were not addressed by the report.

The report, adopted by the calendar committee in an 18-1 vote, recommends that all of Harvard’s 10 faculties begin the academic year immediately after Labor Day, begin Thanksgiving vacation the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, and start the second semester after a month-long intersession in January. Under the new system, commencement would take place in late May rather than in June.

“Given the trend toward greater cross-registration and collaboration...the current lack of calendar coordination imposes unnecessary barriers, such as varying instructional start dates, examination periods, and spring recess dates,” the report says.

Although six of Harvard’s 10 schools already have first semester exams before winter break, the FAS semester runs from late September to late January, with only two days cancelled for Thanksgiving. Commencement this year is on June 10.

Pforzheimer University Professor Sidney Verba ’53, who chaired the calendar committee and presented the recommendations to the Faculty Council yesterday, said that a unified calendar would enable students to take advantage of the University’s varied resources.

“A lot of the cross-registration, of course, is at the graduate student level,” Verba said. “There’s also a lot of interest in, and a lot of examples of, faculty members from other schools teaching in the Core curriculum.”

Not all faculty members were convinced that facilitating cross-registration inherently benefits undergraduate education or justifies a calendar change.

“I haven’t had the experience in my 34 years [at Harvard] that students have had trouble taking the classes they want to take or getting the jobs they want to get,” Plummer Professor of Christian Morals Peter J. Gomes, who spoke out against a potential change at a meeting of the full Faculty in December, said yesterday.

But Verba said that the committee had heard frequent complaints from undergraduates who have had trouble getting summer jobs because Harvard lets out so late in comparison to other schools.

Maier Professor of Political Economy Benjamin M. Friedman ’66, the calendar committee member who dissented from the final report, wrote in a memo accompanying the report that he doubted that synchronizing the calendar would necessarily make cross-registration easier for undergraduates.

“The discussion in our committee made clear that no one is contemplating allowing FAS students in any numbers to enroll in courses at the Business School or the Law School, for example, where the demand would be greatest,” Friedman wrote.