HPC Intends Earlier Pick Of Members

The Harvard Policy Committee is changing its procedure of selecting new members in order to avoid abrupt switches in policy from one year to the next.

The 1968 HPC will probably be selected in November and will meet jointly with the 1967 committee until the end of the Fall term, Henry R. Norr '68, chairman of the HPC, said recently.

Last year, the 1967 HPC did not take office until the beginning of the Spring term, and then met jointly with its predecessor for only three weeks.

Only one of the HPC's 14 student members -- including upperclassmen, two freshmen and three Cliffies--carried over from the old committee to the new.

One of the first actions the 1967 HPC performed was to withdraw a fifth course pass-fail plan that the 1966 HPC had spent several months preparing.

The fifth course pass-fail plan had already passed the Committee on Educational Policy (12 professors who recommend academic legislation to the Faculty), but the CEP suspended action on the plan until the new HPC could devise a proposal of its own.

Under Discussion

That substitute plan, which calls for pass-fail to be applied to one course within a student's normal four-course load rather than to a fifth course, is now being discussed by the CEP.

Having the two HPC's working together over an extended period of time would presumably lessen the possibility of any more such reversals.

Norr said he will ask each Master to designate his House's HPC representative by November. Though the procedure for selecting the HPC representative varies from House to House, the Master has the power either to choose the representative himself or decide how the choice will be made.

Norr will make similar arrangements for the two freshmen, who are elected by the Freshman Council, and for the three Cliffies.

"We've learned that continuity is quite important," Norr said, although he added that the committee works together best at its normal size when all the members are well acquainted with each other.