Council May Alter Honors To Ease Pass-Fail Limits

The Faculty Council decided yesterday it will welcome an amendment to new honors regulations that would avoid penalizing students for taking courses pass-fail outside their concentrations.

Francis M. Pipkin, chairman of the Faculty's Ad Hoc Committee on Honors, said yesterday several members of the council object to the new requirements because they equate pass-fail and failing grades. Others object to the fact that students can get D's in half their non-concentration courses outside and still graduate with honors, he said.

Under rules the Faculty passed last month, candidates for magna degrees must have grades of B or above in half their courses outside their concentration requirements. Candidates for cum laude degrees need at least a B- in half the non-concentration courses.

The honors committee will consider requiring a fixed number of honors grades outside the honors candidates' concentration requirements for magna and cum laude degrees, Pipkin said.

Other options Pipkin said the committee will consider include requiring a minimum grade-point average in courses outside concentrations and returning to the old standard, which required that students get honors grades in two-thirds of their non-concentration letter-graded courses.

"It seems most likely to me that we'll go to a fixed number of courses or a grade point average," Pipkin said, because with the earlier two-third option "you can take a large number of courses within your concentration requirements and a lot of pass-fail, so that you end up only needing two-thirds of four."

Paul G. Bamberg, Jr. '63, lecturer on Physics who attended the Faculty Council meeting and who will help draft the honors amendment, said last night he believes the legislation will probably also include a "very liberal" limit on the number of E's and D's a candidate for honors may have.

The Administrative Board last month considered allowing students affected by the new honors regulations, which cover summas awarded next year and all other degrees awarded after July 1977, to change courses they are now taking pass-fail to letter-graded status.

Emergency, Emergency

But Dean Whitlock, chairman of the ad board, said last night only two students have asked to change their status in courses.

Whitlock said he is "very pleased" that instead of considering honors "on an emergency basis," the council is trying to deal with the problem before it becomes urgent.