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Der Hrvrd Community,

It is I, your cdemic den, mnd Clybugh. Oh yes, I have legally changed my name, Galinda-style, to prove to you all how drop-dead serious I am about expunging every unearned A in this godforsaken university. No more Mrs. Nice Dean. Welcome to SpartA-.

I know these are hard times for Harvard, and it may feel strange to acknowledge our faults at the same time we try to defend ourselves. Ever called your brother a butthead, only to beat up little Timmy from down the block when he tries to do the same? That is exactly how we all felt when Republicans in Congress, the New York Times, and some very mean NYT Letters to the Editor used our internal reports to bash us as academically unserious.

Well, guess what: Your brother is a butthead, and we are academically unserious, and we are going to be making some changes.

This is not your participation trophy Little League. This is like when your mom gets coffee with her high-performing college friend she hasn’t seen in ten years, and comes home and decides the family will be doing fifteen-mile bonding hikes every Sunday, and no phones upstairs, and practicing violin in the evenings.

I am your mom, the friend is the Classroom Social Compact Committee, and over my dead body will you be making Harvard Undergraduate Consulting Group pitch slides when you are supposed to be doing your Heidegger readings. I forgot to mention that College Dean David J. Deming is your dad who slacks off on the hikes and lets the kids drink beer, but, like, in an irritating and vaguely misogynistic way, and not in a cool dad way.

I’m not mad. I’m just disappointed.

Our grading system is failing. Though you claim to be working harder than ever, your faculty seem to think the opposite. In my discussions with your professors, they expressed bewilderment over students neglecting several hundred pages of reading on scholarly debates over widows’ rights in 17th-century Lisbon, sadness as they stared out over a lecture hall which sits empty for a 9 a.m. General Education lecture about ancient Egyptian mouthwashing techniques, and shock when they learned — from the New York Times, no less — that students facing an increasingly difficult job market attempt to differentiate themselves outside of the classroom because they don’t think the lessons imparted in “What is Fungal Consciousness?” will be particularly helpful in their life, or even on the take-home midterm.

As a corrective measure, I propose displaying median course grades on your transcripts. You should feel lucky that I shut down a suggestion from David I. Laibson ’88 to to also include statistics on how much your parents read to you as a kid; how many hours you spent on Khan Academy getting over the fact that your parents didn’t read to you as a kid; how many times in section you started going into a determinist critique of meritocracy to hide the fact that you didn’t do the reading; and whether the guy next to you in lecture was really cute so it was hard to concentrate.

I know what you’re thinking: Will introducing this comparative element cause student-on-student murders to spike, right when campus crime has gone down? The answer is yes. Luckily, we have installed 30 new security cameras in the Yard, and I am here to remind you that employers hate seeing a murder conviction on a job application.

We are also recommending A-pluses, to differentiate between top students for academic prizes or graduate school admissions. They do not exist to scratch some Freudian itch for authority approval, though given your likely history as the twerp in elementary school who exclusively sought your teacher’s approval to the detriment of your peers, we do think this strategy will motivate you.

Further, the hours at Lamont Library have been extended to give you all ample time to rock in the fetal position thinking of how disappointed your parents will be, after all they read to you, if you do not get this new and shiny grade.

Did the ideas we are proposing crash and burn when put into place at Yale University, Cornell University, Dartmouth College, Wellesley College, and Princeton University? Yes. Will they gloriously succeed here? Also yes. Why? Because we know that even as you open this email, haggard, prematurely gray, eyes indigo from lack of sleep, you too want your college experience to be even more rigorous.

And lest I neglect to mention: These things are changing now. Three, two, one, go. What are you still reading this report for? Don’t you have a discussion post to do? Move it!

Humanities kids: Welcome to the new Harvard. STEM students, you’ve been here all along.

See you at my Friday office hours – I’ll be sure to wear a football helmet,

Amanda Claybaugh

Dean of Undergraduate Education

Grim Reaper of GPAs, Bad Cop of B-Pluses, Ghost of Q Guides Past

Yona T. Sperling-Milner, an Associate Editorial editor, is a Social Studies concentrator in Pforzheimer House. In light of the evolving situation, regular purchasers of her extra Adderall are advised that prices will be increasing 60.2 percent until further notice.