Pass-Fail Concept Gets CEP Support

The Committee on Educational Policy agreed in essence yesterday that students should be allowed to take one of their four courses pass-fail.

"We agreed on the general principle," Dean Ford said last night. "We will vote on an exact draft at our next meeting in two weeks and present the plan to the Faculty at their December meeting."

Ford, chairman of the CEP, explained that they discussed troublesome specifics of the Harvard Policy Committee's pass-fail proposal like whether seniors who are already taking fewer than four graded courses could use the new plan to take another pass-fail.

Two weeks ago the CEP heard two members of the HPC argue for the plan. It was the first time within memory that undergraduates had been asked to testify on a question of academic policy.

Pass-fail has been close to adoption once before. Last February the CEP approved an HPC pass-fail plan for a free fifth course; it needed only Faculty approval, which is routine for CEP recommendations.

But when the HPC charged membership at the start of the winter term the new representatives repudiated the proposal of the old, and the CEP decided to re-think the whole question. The new HPC drafted a plan calling for a fourth course pass-fail option, and that is the proposal the CEP approved in principle yesterday.

Isolating Issues

Though the HPC still supports the idea of a free fifth course, their plan this year in no way hinges on it as last year's did. "Isolating the two issues was wise," Edward T. Wilcox, secretary of the CEP said last week, "because of the fiscal implications of the fifth course. We would have to make estimations of how many might take the fifth course and there would clearly be a budgetary limitation."

The pass-fail discussion ate up all the time at the meeting, Wilcox said yesterday, and the CEP postponed considering another HPC proposal for modifying the language requirement.