Faculty Will Pick Calendar for Fall

A special meeting of the Faculty at 4 p.m. today will consider three conflicting motions concerning next Fall's schedule. Two of the motions are aimed at freeing students for political work prior to the national election November 3.

In closed session at the beginning of the meeting, the Faculty will also consider readmitting a student separated from the University for his participation in the April 1969 occupation of University Hall.

Of the three motions concerning next Fall:

one, proposed by Everett I. Mendelsohn, professor of the History of Science, would rearrange the academic calendar to allow a recess for the two weeks prior to the election-the so-called "Princeton plan";

another, proposed by Roderick Firth, Alford Professor of Natural Religion. Moral Philosophy and Civil Polity, would order officers of instruction to "schedule academic exercises [exams, etc.] for the fall term in a way that will not penalize students who are absent

from the University" for those two weeks;

a third, proposed by Juan Marichal, professor of Romance Languages and Literatures, would "maintain the normal academic schedule, stating that the Faculty "reaffirms its belief that its central functions are learning, teaching, research and scholarship" and that any decisions to devote time to political work "must be individual, not institutional, choices."

The Princeton plan has been adopted by over 20 colleges and universities including M. I. T., Princeton, Brown, Penn, Columbia, Cornell, and Stanford. At Harvard, however, the Faculty Council has approved the Marichal motion to take no action, by a vote of 13-1-1.

If the Faculty overrules the Faculty Council to support either the Princeton plan or the Firth motion, it will be another in a growing series of rebuffs the Council has received since it was set up last Fall to streamline Faculty procedure.

The Mendelsolin and Marichal motions are both compromises of several different proposals of similar spirit.

When the Faculty discussed the various plans two weeks ago. Firth said the drawbacks of the Princeton plan are that it would be costly to the University, "economically unjust" to those with other commitments when the time would have to be made up, and also subject to the approval of the University's governing boards.

H. Stuart Hughes, a supporter of the Marichal motion, said the Firth motion would be coercive-in that it would allow a minority of students to force changes on an instructor as well as administratively complicated. He said the motions "put the on us on an already over-burdened Faculty whose research and writing time is already severely eroded.

Citing the "farcical or tragie" situation resulting from the Faculty's loosening of requirements this past Spring. Hughes said many Faculty members are "sick and tired of picking up the tab every time some minority succumbs to possibly temporary enthusiasins."