Faculty Council Rejects Plan For Freshman Expos Waivers

The Faculty Council yesterday rejected a proposal by the Expository Writing Program that would have released some freshmen from the Expos requirement next year.

The council rejected the plan--which was designed to decrease the size of expos classes--because of "very strong sentiment that all freshmen should take expos," a source close to the council said yesterday.

Council members felt that the present average size of expos classes is close enough to the ideal class size to make the proposed change unnecessary, the source said.

All lower-group expos classes will have standardized reading lists next year so that they will be more equal in size than they are this year, Gwynne B. Evans, director of the Expos Program, said last night.

The lower-group classes will spend all but the last two weeks of the course studying a book of essays and a style handbook, Evans said. During the last two weeks, he said, instructors will assign one of a list of about 20 books that the Expos Office will prepare.

Evans said he is disappointed at the council's decision, because the council is "proceeding mathematically, and you can't do that to studetnts."

While the average expos class size is 18, Evans said most expos classes have over 20 students. He said the ideal expos class size is 15.

Evans proposed the revised expos program--which would have released students with SAT scores above a set cut-off from the expos requirement--in an effort to decrease class sizes without increasing the expos budget.

Evans said last night that he had hoped the council would allot the program more money so that it could continue to teach all freshmen and decrease class sizes at the same time.

This year's expos budget is about $160,000.

Look Outside Harvard

The Council also encouraged the expos program to look for non-Harvard graduate students to teach expos classes next year.

Middle-group expos courses will not have a standardized curriculum next year, Evans said. He said there is now a large disparity in lower group class sizes because each class has a different topic and some are more popular than others.