Faculty Council Denies Drop Date Extension

The Faculty Council killed a student-backed proposal yesterday to extend the deadline for dropping courses, arguing that an extension would encourage students to abandon classes in which they fear they will do poorly.

The committee also gave a boost to professors and students pushing for greater recognition of ethnic studies and recommended tougher academic requirements for first-years. Both proposals will go before the full Faculty for approval at an unspecified later date.

The vote by the 19-member advisory committee is a dead end for plans to extend by two weeks the deadline which allows students to drop courses without a notation on their transcripts.

Alex B. Patterson ’02-’03 first introduced the proposal at a Jan. 29 Committee on Undergraduate Education (CUE) meeting. He and others argued that the extension of the deadline to the seventh week of the term would give students more freedom to take risks in choosing classes.

The prospect of a withdrawal notation on their transcript—visible to potential employers—can discourage students from taking challenging classes, he said.

The proposal was passed along to the Faculty Council for possible reworking and revision.

But yesterday, the council scrapped the plan altogether.

According to Baird Professor of Physics Gary J. Feldman, the majority of the council felt that the extra time would provide an easy way out for students overly concerned with grades.

“The arguments against tended to worry that students might drop courses because they felt they were going to get a bad grade which some people felt was not a good reason for dropping the course,” Feldman said.

Feldman added that because the “WD” withdrawal notation does not affect grade point average, it doesn’t have detrimental effects for the student unless it is one of many.

Students behind the proposal, including Undergraduate Council President Rohit Chopra ’04, blasted the committee’s decision.

Calling the current policy “draconian,” Chopra said that students should have the opportunity to drop classes in which they are not getting adequate support.

A Busy Meeting

While knocking down the drop deadline extension, the council passed along to the full Faculty the request of the Committee on Ethnic Studies (CES) to become a standing committee after nine years of “ad hoc” status.

The move buoyed the hopes of professors and students who have pushed for broader opportunities and offerings in the field.

Music Professor Kay K. Shelemay, who serves as chair of CES, said that the elevation to standing committee status—with an accompanying increase in visibility—represents an important step forward.

“We would like to drop the cloak of anonymity and take our place among the other standing committees of the University,” Shelemay said.

Being a standing committee means that the names and contact information of the group’s members will be published in course catalogs, giving students greater access to the resources they provide. According to Shelemay, ad hoc committees generally deal with specific issues and exist for only finite periods of time.

Shelemay said that the mission of the CES is to enhance courses in ethnic studies in the United States, specifically Latino-American, Asian-American and Native American subject matter.

The council also gave its approval to a change in academic requirements, advocated by Dean of the College Harry R. Lewis ’68, that would bring standards for first-years in line with those for upperclass students.

As it stands now, all students but those in their first term at the College who receive a failing grade as well as an unsatisfactory grade, or who receive fewer than two satisfactory grades, can be required to take a year’s leave of absence from the College. The standards for students in their first term at school, however, are more lenient—needing only one satisfactory grade to retain their place in the College.

“The Board felt that it would in general be better for someone who could not meet the ordinary minimum requirements to take a year away from Harvard to get focused and re-energized before trying Harvard coursework again,” Lewis wrote in an e-mail.

According to the proposal Lewis submitted to the Faculty Council, only eight students over the past two academic years have fallen in the range that is acceptable for those in their first term, but unacceptable for others. Of those, six either failed to meet requirements in their spring term or did not finish the school year.

“Failure at this level is almost invariably associated with lack of motivation, conflicts about goals, distracting personal problems, etc., which are best sorted out away from Harvard,” Lewis said. “Students who take a year away from Harvard for academic reasons almost always return to do much better.”

If the full Faculty approves the change, it will be reversing its 1997 decision to keep requirements for first-years more lenient than those for upperclass students.

—Staff writer Laura L. Krug can be reached at krug@fas.harvard.edu.