Faculty OK's Independent Study Change

At a brief, lightly attended meeting yesterday, the Faculty voted unanimously to open Independent Study to sophomores and non-honors students.

The change in Independent Study rules, approved last month by the Faculty's Committee on Educational policy, will take effect next fall. The new rules require that a student get approval for an Independent Study from his faculty supervisor and the supervisor's Department. Until now the student's own department has had veto power over proposed projects.

Combined with the fourth-course pass-fail plan the Faculty approved last Fall, yesterday's action will give almost every student in the College the option of taking one of his four courses without a grade. But the pass-fail legislation set a limit of one ungraded course per term, so no one will be able to take both a pass-fail course and an Independent Study at the same time.

The Student-Faculty Advisory Council's resolution asking the Faculty to limit recruitment on campus was not discussed yesterday. Dean Ford said that the resolution reached him too late to go on the printed docket which is mailed to all Faculty, and that bringing it up spontaneously might have raised charges that the proposal wasn't getting a fair hearing. It will be docketed for the Faculty's next meeting, May 21.

SFAC Request

The only other time business from SFAC has reached the Faculty was last February, when President Pusey reported that he could not respond to a SFAC request that Dow recruiters be temporarily kept off campus. The Faculty narrowly voted down the resolution and some members complained that the confusion in having to deal with the question suddenly destroyed the resolution's chances.

In its only other business yesterday, the Faculty dissolved the Standing Committee on Regional Studies. The Committee which once coordinated regional studies in the University has been inactive for several years as its duties were gradually subsumed by units like the Russian Research Center and the East Asian Research Center.