Med Students Play the Numbers Game

First year Med students this Wednesday wrested the grading system from the faculty in an attempt to force a return to a pass-fail grading policy at the School.

Over 90 per cent of the class Tuesday refused to sign their names to bluebooks at an exam in Physiology.

Instead, they numbered their books, and when the faculty posts the numbers and grades next week, only those who failed will identify themselves. The students hope to force the faculty to record simply "pass" grades for all those students who remain anaonymous.

A student representative who would not disclose his name explained Tuesday that attempts to grade medical students are virtually meaningless, as all med students are assured internships in hospitals.

"They're just trying to keep doctors from being doctors," he said.

The protest stemmed from what students considered an abuse of a new four-point system.

That four-point system was baptized last month at a first-year examination in "Histology." When the results came back, 16 per cent of the students received "marginal," or borderline marks, and four per cent had failed.

The students who organized the past week's protest decided that those percentages were just too great for what they had hoped was a slight variation on the pass-fail system.

How the faculty will react to the student plan is still not clear. Robert H. Ebert, dean of the Med School, is rumored to have formed a committee of professors to study the student grievances, but he could not be reached to confirm this.

The student representative denied that the protest was a "swing back" to the protests of the late-60s. "We're not into any of this 'right-on' shit," he concluded.