Students who completed the LS1a test expressed mixed views on the decision to postpone the exam for some students to the spring semester, noting that while more time to study might be an advantage, students would also be more likely to forget course material.
Faculty and staff teaching courses affected by the bomb scare also wrestled with decisions about how to proceed given the circumstances.
After the Science Center was evacuated, Gregory Tucci, a senior lecturer on chemistry and chemical biology who co-teaches LPSA, met in Annenberg with the course’s teaching staff, and spoke with Dean of Undergraduate Education Jay M. Harris, to discuss what to do about the cancelled exam. Tucci said he knew that some students were leaving campus, and so he wanted to make sure that they had two opportunities to make up the exam. He also wanted to give them an option not to take the exam at all.
“We did not want this experience to hurt their grade[s] in any way,” Tucci said in a phone interview Monday evening. “It was a tough day,” he added.
Just before noon on Monday, Harvard Law School professor Richard H. Fallon sent an email to his students in Government 1510 informing them about their options to make up or forgo their cancelled exam.
“I am terribly sorry about this morning's bomb scare,” Fallon wrote in his email to students. “I very much hope that it was not too traumatic for any of you in its effects.”
Not all courses will be offering make-up sessions for affected Monday morning exams, however. After students were evacuated from Emerson, the final exam for intermediate language course Greek Ac was immediately relocated to Boylston Hall, where students completed the test in spite of the disruption. And students enrolled in Government 1368: “The Politics of American Education” must now complete a take-home exam in its place, to be turned in by Friday.
—Bryan L. Bu, Radhika Jain, and Kevin J. Wu contributed to the reporting of this story.
—Staff writer Madeline R. Conway can be reached at mconway@thecrimson.com. Follow her on Twitter @MadelineRConway.