Students Ask History Dept Restructure

In a beated closed meeting last night, 150 history graduate students debated proposals for radically restructuring their department.

The agenda included the proposal that "all grades for graduate students in courses, on examinations, and on papers should be abolished except in exams which measure technical skills such as languages." In those exams, the proposal said, the grade would be pass/ fail.

Other proposals suggested that alternatives to oral exams be approved, that lecture courses should be excluded from the course requirements for any field in the history department, and that a Graduate School Administrative Board, consisting of administrators and professors from all departments, should control the dismissal of students.

Wayne D. Brazil, a third-year graduate student and chairman of the meeting, said that the only conclusion drawn from the three hour long debate was that "some form of continued evaluation is necessary." He would not comment on the support for specific proposals.

The students split into three approximately equal factions of varying contentment with the department, another third year graduate student said last night. The most discontented faction will present proposals to the department independently if they cannot gain majority support for the demands raised at the meeting, the student added.

The meeting last night concluded that the next step will be a discussion meeting to which all the history department faculty will be invited. No decisions on specific proposals will be made until after that meeting, sometime next week, Brazil said.

Other proposals under evaluation include substituting computer programming or demography courses for the language requirement; making colloquia and seminars optional; and the creation of a variety of other graduate courses taught by junior faculty, advanced graduate students, or by the students who chose to organize a course on their own.

An independent ad hoc group formed last summer initiated last night's closed meeting. This smaller "discontent" group was formed as a reaction to the dismissal of several graduate students, according to one of its members. The ad hoc group believed that the dismissals were made "without proper procedures," he added. Only a few sympathetic faculty members knew of the group's existence until yesterday.