SCCEP Advocates End Of Sophomore Standing

A report just completed by the Student Council Committee on Educational Policy has recommended that Sophomore Standing be abolished.

The report also suggested a further examination of the freshman year, "with regard to extending the Seminars and creating a Freshman House system." It asked the Committee on General Education to consider criteria by which students might substitute upper-level distribution for lower-level Gen Ed requirements.

Opportunities such as waiver of the Gen Ed A requirement, exemption from lower-level Gen Ed, concentration in the first year of residence, and immediate assignment to a House currently are not "open to a Freshman even if he has particular qualification or an unusually pertinent reason."

Present Tests Not Relevant

These options are offered to new sophomores, but "the Advanced Placement tests, the present criteria for Sophomore Standing, do not measure quantities relevant to these privileges," the report charged.

"The idea of a three-year program has not been adequately examined," it claimed, "and the Committee's poll revealed that students are neither very interested in acceleration nor really free to choose between three or four years after they have entered the program."

"Harvard is a four-year college," the report said. Statements from Masters, Senior Tutors, and Departmental tutors indicate that "Sophomore Standing students have been hurt by acceleration, even though the students themselves do not feel the damage."

'Intellectual Merit Badge'

In pointing out "extraordinary shallowness of students perception of the program," the report claimed that Sophomore Standing may be merely "an intellectual merit badge," or a way to escape Gen Ed and Physical Training requirements.

Some members of the SCCEP will file a minority report later. The majority statement noted that part of the Committee felt students should be allowed to graduate in three years because of the College's space limitations.