Ungraded Tutorial

The Faculty of Arts and Sciences voted last week to allow ungraded senior tutorials for credit. Each department which wants to institute this practice, however, must apply to the Committee on General Education for final approval.

The upgraded tutorial system will give several departments the opportunity to eliminate the current practice of giving the same grade in both tutorial and to the thesis--a seemingly pointless redundancy. Just like the freshman seminar program, the ungraded tutorial will not be computed in a student's over-all average, but rather will be judged on a pass-fail basis.

The Government Department, which initiated the move toward ungraded senior tutorials, awarded exactly the same grade on thesis and tutorial last year. Departments with a similar system, such as the Economics Department, should adopt the new program to protect their students from double jeopardy grading. But other departments, without a comparable thesis-tutorial structure, apparently will have to wait until the trend away from grades finds its logical conclusion--no grades at all.