Faculty Vote Revamps Gen Ed Requirements; Polaroid Report Heard

After four minutes of debate and with only one dissent, the Faculty yesterday voted to amend the General Education requirement for undergraduates. Students will now be permitted to substitute two full departmental courses or four half-courses for the one full year of Gen Ed courses previously needed for satisfaction of the basic requirement in Natural Sciences, Social Sciences and Humanities.

The new rules are a generalization of the so-called "Nat Sci bypass" which allowed students-mostly Nat Sci concentrators-to avoid having to take introductory Gen Ed courses if they were taking at least two departmental courses in the natural sciences. Now all students will be relieved of the basic Gen Ed requirement in their own areas of concentration, and will be able to avoid it in the other two areas if they'd rather take twice as many departmental courses.

Through the upper level and expository writing requirements remain unchanged, the expos department is planning extensive changes in its Freshman program next year (see tomorrow's CRIMSON) and Gen Ed chairman Edward T. Wilcox told the Faculty yesterday that because of the new rules, the Gen Ed committee is considering elimination of the distinction between the basic and upper level Gen Ed requirements.

So after all the past year's discussion of curriculum reform, General Education-the subject of heated debate during its inception after World War II and its first major revision in 1965-will have been completely revamped with little or no hoopla.

Petitions

Wilcox said the reform came as the result of 150 petitions his office receives every year from students asking for exceptions to the old rules.

He said the new regulations would provide students three advantages:

Greater flexibility in choosing courses by eliminating the need for a Gen Ed course in one's own area of concentration;

Increased opportunity to switch concentrations and still satisfy all requirements;

An opportunity to gain greater breadth of educational experience either through a number of departmental courses or through individual Gen Ed courses "which we feel provide great breadth themselves."

The easy passage of this reform reflects not so much a lack of interest on the part of Faculty members as a

skillful management by the Gen Ed committee.

A more radical Gen Ed reform proposal from the Committee on Undergraduate Education, which would have changed all Gen Ed requirements to recommendations, was delayed. The CUE supported the current reform and OUE member James S. Ackerman, professor of Fine Arts, seconded it yesterday.

Lawnmowers

Wilcox was careful in his speech to emphasize that General Education was in no way being downgraded in importance. In a long, dramatic metaphor involving a suburban lawnmower, he suggested that Gen Ed was still running fine, and merely needed adjustments.

"I am not prepared to neglect a tune-up on the grounds that we should wait until somebody invents a new machine," Wilcox said.

This statement was in response to an earlier metaphor by Stanley Hoffman, professor of Government, who has insisted at several earlier Faculty meetings that non-major curriculum reform was "putting the cart before the horse."

Investigation

In other business, the Faculty heard a long report from chairman Roger Rosenblatt, assistant professor of English, of the Commission on Inquiry's investigation into the Physics Department's cancellation of a lecture by Polaroid Corporation president Edwin H. Land '29, following organized threats of disruption.

The report offered several suggestions for similar situations in the future, but concluded that the Physics Department had acted properly in cancelling the lecture to avoid the likelihood of violence. The complete report will be distributed to students later this week.

The Commission on Inquiry report does not rule out action by the Committee on Rights and Responsibilities. Three complaints have already been filed with the CRR over the episode: one by a Law student against the Physics Department and two by other students against the graduate student who led the group planning the disruption.

All the above, plus the reading of the minutes and presentation of an honorary degree, took forty minutes. The next hour and fifteen minutes was spent in a discussion of Faculty rules.