Faculty Is Against Mid-Term Grades

The Faculty of Arts and Sciences yesterday voted down an Administrative Board motion to reinstate mid-term grades as a peacetime mobilization measure. It did, however, vote to waive the requirement of a General Examination at mid-year for qualified students who were prevented from taking the spring exam because of military service.

The Faculty also expressed its sympathy for an equitable system of cumulative credit for students called for service before the end of an academic term. It requested that the Committee on Educational Policy "devise a policy to meet this situation when and if it develops."

Both the Administrative Board and the Student Council had supported the measure to require mid-term grades in under-graduate courses over the objection of the Committee on Educational Policy.

This proposal was rejected by the Faculty on the grounds that since students are now deferred until the end of a term or year, mid-term grades were not required at present. Many Faculty members also felt that a return to mid-term grades would unnecessarily interfere with the educational policy and practices of numerous departments and professors.

The Administrative Board was given the right to waive the General Examination for certain mid-years graduates this February because so few undergraduates are graduating at the end of this term.

The Faculty will re-examine this matter if more students accelerate so as to graduate at mid-year. Should such a situations arise, it is likely that the wartime February Generals would be revived.

Provost Buck issued a seven-point preliminary mobilization blueprint in September. At that time the Provost did not believe cumulative credits would be necessary for this year. The Administrative Board, of which Buck is chairman, also rejected the idea of reinstituting cumulative credits. The plan for mid-term grades was added to Buck's recommendations.

Council Wanted Both

The Student Council was the only advisory group to recommend both the return to mid-term grade and the cumulative credit system.

Mid-year generals, mid-term grades, and cumulative credits were University policy throughout the war, but at that time students were drafted during an academic term. Until the present draft policy, no undergraduates are being taken out of their classes until the completion of the academic year.