Gov Would End Senior Tutorial Marks for '66

The Government Department will give an ungraded senior tutorial this year if it can gain Faculty approval of the precedent-shattering move before January, Arthur A. Maass, the department chairman, said yesterday.

"The department unanimously recommended the change. I expect that the faculty will honor the recommendation," he declared. Last Spring, when the suggestion was first made to omit the grade for Gov 99, Maass said that the change would probably not go into effect until 1967.

The Committee on Educational Policy, chaired by Dean Ford, discussed the proposal Wednesday but took no formal action. Instead, the CEP sent the proposal back to the Gov Department with a few general comments.

According to one source, the central issue for the CEP was "Do students want grade or not?"

The College currently requires that all departments give a grade for senior tutorial even though most tutorials are spent entirely in the writing of theses, which receive separate grades. The Gov Department believes that the tutorial grade is superflous and ought to be eliminated.

One objection to the change is that increasing the number of ungraded courses might make admission to graduate school more difficult. Tutors, it was suggested, might have to write a unwieldy number of letters explaining why the senior tutorial is ungraded.

Maass dismissed this argument yesterday. "Tutors have to write recommendations anyway," he said. In his own experience of admitting graduate students, he continued, there never has been any trouble evaluating graduates of such colleges as Swarthmore and Oberlin "who have more ungraded courses on their transcripts than we do."

The CEP noted that grades for senior tutorial are not required at mid-year. Maass said, however, the department is equally concerned with eliminating them in June also. Honors are voted in late May before the final tutorial grades are in, he explained, and therefore these marks have no bearing.

If the Faculty approves the change, the Gov department would simply give "credit" or "non-credit" for the tutorial or mark it "satisfactory" or "non-satisfactory." If the department must retain year-end grades, however, it will make them a reflection of the thesis, Maass said.

Although Maas was familiar with some of the CEP's discussion, he said he had received no official word or comment from the committee. He was not present at the meeting.