Law School Students Ask New System Proposed Grading Is Optional All 3 Years

A group of second-year law students has renewed the controversy over grade reform at the Law School by issuing a proposal which calls for a completely optional grading system for all three years.

The proposal-drafted by four students calling themselves the Committee for Administrative Changes-also suggests a lottery for the selection of students to the prestigious Harvard Law Review and a more lenient standard for graduation with honors.

Extending Option

The committee's plan marks the first time that students have suggested extending the pass-fail option to the last two years of Law School.

Last Spring, pressure by first-year students favoring a mandatory pass-fail system for the first year moved the faculty to approve an optional grading system under which students could choose between pass-fail, a four category system, or the old nine category system.

However, the faculty retained mandatory grades for the final two years.

A group of first-year students took a poll in December which showed that slightly over half the class favored mandatory pass-fail, but the poll elicited little faculty response, according to Andrew I. Schepard, a member of the group.

Under the new system proposed by the committee, students could see their grades in whatever form they wished, even on a scale of 0-100. They would then be free to specify the form in which their grades would be released and to choose a different form for each year.

Students could also note on their transcripts that they had chosen to see their grades in only one form, such as passfail. This last point is designed to protect students from prospective employers who may think a student on pass-fail is concealing poor grades.

"The advantage of this system over mandatory pass-fail is that it does not penalize the student who happens to want grades," said Bruce M. Bakerman, a member of the committee.

"We're interested in reducing the pressure-which is still enormous-by having people work together towards common ends. The worst thing about the present system is the extremely competitive atmosphere which imposes psychological strain on some people," he said.

No Fair

The group's two other proposals are aimed at the arbitrary, and sometimes inaccurate, distinctions grades make among students at the Law School, he said.

One proposal would reduce the requirements for honors at graduation. Law students now must have an A-average to win cum laude, A to win magna cum laude, and A + to win summa cum laude. The new plan would change the requirements to B-, B +, and A respectively.

The other proposal asks that the editors of the Law Review select new editors by lottery. The Law Review-which is one of the most prestigious legal publications in the country-now chooses part of its members by grades and part by a writing competition.

Re-examination

Such a change "would help to re-orient the all-too-awesome qualities of the Review, emphasizing what is done instead of who does it," the committee said in its statement.

Both Bakerman and Schepard said there were important differences between their programs, but they agreed that both groups wanted a re-examination of the grading system.