Yale Professor Protests Grades, Lets Class Vote Itself Top Marks

Robert M. Cook, assistant professor of sociology at Yale University, has decided that a teacher should have the right to teach without grades.

As a result, the 12 students in his seminar on American Society and Culture have voted to give themselves grades of 100 per-centile for this semester.

Originally, the students had decided not to give themselves any grade at all. But George May, dean of Yale College, announced that either a numerical grade or a satisfactory-unsatisfactory rating must be issued as a university rule. The students responded by voting themselves the highest possible grade

'Absurdity of System'

"The absurdity of the students' solution for the requirement or grades mirrors the absurdity of the grading system at Yale," Cook said Friday in a letter to Dean May.

In the same letter, Cook called for a full-scale discussion of the grading requirements by the faculty.

"It seems to me it is time to eliminate a lot of the nonsense involved with class ranking and grading," he said. "A teacher should have the right to teach as he sees fit, whether the content of the course or the way it is taught is involved," the letter continued.

No Intention to Grade

Cook told the class at its first meeting that he had no intention of giving them grades. "The course was designed to communicate an attitude of questioning about contemporary sociological problems. You can't measure an attitude of questioning," he said.

The seminar students' original decision not to give themselves any sort of grades was announced Wednesday at the same time Cook wrote another letter to May.

This letter asked for a special faculty meeting to reconsider the university policy of supplying grades and class standing to local draft boards.

No Action Yet

May has not yet taken any action on the request from Cook, who was a peace candidate for Congress last November.

Cook's objection to grades in his course is a separate issue from his call for a re-evaluation of Yale's policy on the draft, emphasized Peter B. Cherry, a student in the sociology seminar.

"The reason for our protest is to question the educational value of the grading system as a whole at Yale," he said.