Faculty Approves Discipline Plan

The Faculty of Arts and Sciences has overwhelmingly approved the Governance Committee's proposed University-wide procedures for disciplining Faculty members.

The results of a Faculty mail ballot were announced at a sparsely-attended Faculty meeting yesterday. The vote was 246 to 14.

According to the proposal-which has also been ratified by the faculties of Business, Law, and Medicine-a two-step procedure would be set up to handle charges of faculty misconduct.

The charges would first be heard by a screening committee set up by the professor's own faculty. If the charges are upheld by the screening committee, the professor's case would then be heard by a seven-man panel composed of four members of his own faculty and three others from remaining faculties. Two Corporation members may also sit on the panel as non-voting members.

The seven-man panel would then forward its recommendation to the President. He may either approve the recommendation-and submit it to the Corporation for action-or overrule it and refer the case back to the hearing panel. Final authority, however, lies with the President and the Corporation.

Under the proposal, Faculty members may be prosecuted for "grave misconduct"-encompassing violations of the Resolution on Rights and Responsibilities-or "neglect of duty." Administrators who are also faculty members may be charged with "grave misconduct."

In other business yesterday, the Faculty heard and briefly discussed four proposals for curriculum reform which Dean May-as chairman of the Committee on Undergraduate Education-will bring before the Faculty at its next meeting on May 18.

One proposal would change the name of Independent Study to Independent Work and limit a student to four accredited terms of such work in his entire undergraduate career.

May-stated that the proposed Independent Work program would be supplemented by a new course given by departments in which small groups of students would participate in supervised reading or research. The new course, May suggested, would closely resemble tutorial, and it would be designed to make the "mutual obligations" of teachers and students "more clear than [they are] currently under Independent Study."

The proposal drew sharp criticism from David S. Landes, professor of History, who claimed that the proposal was designed "to institutionalize [the] abuses" of the current Independent Study program.

May answered that the new proposal would allow a student to do concentrated work in a particular field if he so desired, and he urged the Faculty to consider the differences between the existing Independent Study program and the proposed legislation.

The three other CUE proposals would:

reduce the required work load from 16 1/2 to 16 courses;

allow juniors the option now available only to seniors of taking more than the one ungraded course per term;

establish the regular work rate at four courses per term so that "extra tuition will no longer be charged for extra instruction" in any one particular term.