Grading Issue To Be Bypassed By Law Faculty

The Law School Faculty voted unanimously yesterday to accept a recommendation from the Committee on Legal Education that the question of pass-fail grading in the first year not be considered this Spring.

The faculty endorsed the Committee's memorandum-issued on March 30-which reasoned that "no new information or changed circumstances have been shown that would warrant reconsideration [of the grade issue] now."

A special committee on grading was established in February of 1969 and spent most of that Spring semester studying grade reforms. A system offering three grade options was proposed by that committee and is now in effect.

Grading and Education

The Law Faculty also passed by a 24-8 margin a motion by Stanley S. Surrey, Smith Professor of Law, requesting that Dean Sacks consider the faculty's discussion and the relationship of the grading issue to other areas of legal education, "with specific reference toexisting committee activities and plans and to whether further methods of inquiry are appropriate."

Surrey said after the meeting he did not want to let the grading issue "drop altogether," but that he feared "it was too late in the session to deal with the issue."

The Committee's memorandum notes that "a full reconsideration of grading will interfere with studies and efforts toward educational improvements that deserve higher priority," citing changes in written work in the second and third years among other examples.

However, a dissenting opinion drafted by the three student members of the Committee holds that "the present option system satisfies no one," and that "the costs of [reexamining grading] are outweighed by the need to respond to the profound concern of the present first-year class."

David Riemer, a first-year student on the Committee, said yesterday he "was not surprised" by the faculty's action. Riemer also said a movement among first-year students aimed at forcing the pass-fail issue may be resumed.

"It seemed clear (from a questionnaire on first-year grading) that there is strong support among first-year students for a mandatory pass-fail system. Now we may have to pick up the idea of changing the present system by getting people to elect the pass-fail reporting option in mass," Reimer said.

The majority report of the Committee accepted by the faculty notes, "Our conclusion that the [grading] matter should not be reopened... is in part due to our conviction-and our sense that the faculty shares that conviction-that the adoption of an unqualified, mandatory pass-fail system is unacceptable on its merits."