Chopping Block

Any proposal requiring a vote of the Faculty of Arts & Sciences, approval of all the deans in Harvard University, and the endorsement of the Corporation is somewhat difficult to enact. Nonetheless, the Provost made such a proposal last year: because the University's late Commencement date made it tough for students to find summer jobs, he suggested shortening the academic year.

Resolutely, he and his minions took up their hatchets and chopped away fiercely at the red tape for the better part of a term, eventually with success. By chipping a day off here and a day off there, they managed to schedule Commencement a week earlier. This is all to the good so far.

Yet with all the flailing this required, the hatchets were bound to mangle something they should not have. They did. They chopped fall reading period into a miserable relic, all of eight days long. Last year's ten day reading period was inadequate enough, and the University spared itself vehement complaints only by asserting that its brevity was due to an unfortunate juncture of the calendar and Corporation by-laws which would never happen again. Not only is this year's shorter, however, but apparently it is permanent as well.

Reading period has two functions: it provides time for study of entire books assigned in courses and it allows students an opportunity to review for exams. A week and a day is unfit for either task. First, faculty members have not promised any reduction in reading period assignments, and two days for each course allows just about enough time to familiarize a few lists of contents. Moreover, every invasion of reading period by long-winded lecturers--and there are many each year--will be more costly than ever.

Second, even if it is possible to race through the reading period tasks in eight days, there will be little time left for reviewing purposes--an especially important fact now that exam period has lost two days itself. And for those whose exams, thanks to another unfortunate juncture of calendar and by-laws, are squeezed into the first few days of examination period, adequate preparation will be impossible.

To complete this enumeration, there are the students who spend much time and energy battering one another on Soldiers Field or poring over campaign leaflets. For them, a long reading period is a sine qua non.

It will help no one if the University simply restores last year's miserable ten days; fall reading period should be as long as spring's, which is currently thirteen days. To do this, the administration must cut five days somewhere, and we suggest that the end of summer vacation is the most worthy target. Returning one week earlier is not half as upsetting as missing out on summer jobs or cramming three week's work into one. Perhaps it is too much to ask the Provost to dust off his hatchet once more, but the present schedule makes a mockery of what has been a very useful institution. With an entire year to go, increasing reading period to thirteen days should not be too difficult.