FACULTY ANTICIPATES THESIS EPIDEMIC AS NON-HONORS SENIORS ARE CURBED

Confidently expecting a veritable rash of honor candidates next year, the Faculty has, by its decision to require final exams of all non-honor seniors, made an important move in the deemphasizing of Plan B concentration.

When concentration and distribution systems were first inaugurated, back in the days of the Class of 1914, College authorities were confident that students would center their energies around a special topic or field of interest. Tutorial was expected to serve as a means of focusing course work, and thus preparing the student for his general examinations and Senior thesis.

Years later, recognizing that many men were only mildly interested in writing learned dissertations on specialized subjects, the Faculty introduced a system of "Plan B tutorial." Under this scheme students were expected to place more emphasis on course-work, utilizing tutorial for general reading to fill in the gaps.

At the same time the College began to lesson class work, for fear that hour exams and course papers left upperclassmen with insufficient time for even Plan B tutorial.

A variety of methods were used. Some departments introduced outright course reduction, permitting students to enroll for less than the normal number of subjects in the final year. Others inaugurated a so-called "thesis course," counting for half-credit.

This was meant to bring together the honors man and a Faculty member in close collaboration on a "dissertation." But in practice the thesis courses, conducted by individual conferences, degenerated into little more than subterfuges for half-course reduction. Accordingly the Faculty voted last Tuesday to abolish them.

While every honors Senior had a thesis to worry about, his Plan B brother did not. Shunned by their tutors more and more, the non-honors men enjoyed a blissful period of leisure once mid-year examinations were over.

With course-work reduced because this "might interfere with tutorial," and with tutorial reduced because tutors just weren't interested in thesisless Seniors, the Plan B man enjoyed a glorious if useless second-half year: no lectures, no course papers, no finals, no thesis, and just a general exam to worry about.

The Student Council, through its Committee on Education, recognizing the anomaly of Seniors signing six-month leases in Palm Beach, recently urged the Faculty to require finals of all Seniors, thesis or no thesis.

But the Faculty, being composed of men typifying Aristotle's golden mean, voted to curb only the freedom of the Plan B men, who must now do more than merely register for second-half-year courses. Plan A men, as of old, go scot-free on the theory that their thesis work more than compensates. Whether there will be an epidemic of Plan A-ing remains to be seen.