Sophomore Standing Again

Sophomore Standing has come under heavy fire in the past year. Several Masters--of whom the most vocal has been John Finley of Eliot House-- have openly challenged the Program; at times, indeed, the Sophomore Standing critics seemed to speak for a majority of the Faculty. The Program suffered an unrestrained attack from another quarter last spring, when the Student Council Committee on Educational Policy recommended its abolition.

The Program's critics have talked of problems that can result from incorporating a three-year education into a four-year college. Predominantly, the problems discussed have concerned aspects of education not strictly academic: underlying the critics' discussion has been a fundamental concept of liberal education that involves the whole of a student's intellectual life.

The administration, unfortunately, has troubled to reply only through E.T. Wilcox's report to the Faculty on Advanced Standing. He has invoked in the Program's support only the peripheral criteria of grades, degrees, and rank lists-- standards that nobody ever worried about. In short, nobody administering the Program has either refuted the complaints of its detractors or even discussed them intelligently.