Twelve O'Clock High

Few seniors will be eating early luncheons next year. Short-sighted scheduling has piled up three of the most describe and popular courses into one hour--Monday at twelve.

The three courses are Comparative Literature 166, History 169, and Humanities 130. Professor Guerard's course in "Forms of the Modern Novel" played to capacity crowds in 1956, and there is every indication that it will draw as well next fall, after a year's hiatus. "American Intellectual History" was also omitted this year, enabling Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. to devote himself to writing and politicking. The acclaim for his book, The Crisis of the Old Order, will probably increase the demand for his course.

Professor MacLeish's "An Approach to Poetry" is the only one of the three which was given this year. Despite the papers due every Saturday, more students wanted to take Hum 130 than could be accommodated; consequently, enrollment was limited to seniors and high-ranking juniors. Next year will be the only opportunity for most members of the Class of 1958 to take the course.

Seniors willing to sacrifice an early noon meal for one of these courses will still be barred from the other two by clumsy administration. The University, in effect, has made it impossible for a great many students to take some of its most desirable courses.

The scheduling dilemma is easily resolved. While twelve may be a pleasant hour for the lecturers involved, one or more of them could shift to eleven o'clock or two without undue stress. Certainly there is no reason why Comp Lit 166 should have been moved to the already overcrowded noon hour.

Similar situations can be avoided in the future with no great effort. At present the assignment of lecture hours is left to the discretion of the individual departments; it is only through happy chance and the limited number of large halls that all of the most popular courses do not meet on Mondays at twelve.

If the Registrar, however, were empowered to arrange lecture hours, with the assent of the various departments, there would be fewer mixups of this sort. This system would demand qualitative judgments which would not always be easy; an IBM machine cannot distinguish between Comp Lit 166 and English 10, but a perceptive administrator can. There is no reason why courses cannot be scheduled according to the needs of both instructors and students, instead of the whims of the autonomous departments.