According to Mori, several members of the department are now advising three thesis writers and one Briggs-Copeland Lecturer, Bridget Mullins, has taken on four.

Nevertheless, the application process remains unpredictable and, some students claim, unfair.

“I personally felt like it was a crapshoot,” Gagnon wrote in an e-mail.

Gagnon has decided not to write a senior thesis at all, and plans to write her novella on her own.

Emily S. High ’06, whose proposal to write a fiction thesis was accepted, said she felt “beyond lucky to snag one.”

High said she, like Gagnon, would not have written a non-creative, or critical, thesis had her creative proposal been rejected.

Engell made his request for an additional Briggs-Copeland lecturer to Dean of the Humanities Maria Tatar earlier this month. He said his proposal had been well received by the administration but he did not know when a decision on the new position would be reached.

Mori noted, however, that a sixth creative writing lecturer would not increase the number of possible creative theses by more than two or three.

“I think it’s fair to say that there will always be competition for this program,” she said.

—Emily G.W. Chau contributed to the reporting of this article.

—Staff writer Allison A. Frost can be reached at afrost@fas.harvard.edu.

—Staff writer Anton S. Troianovski can be reached at atroian@fas.harvard.edu.