Keep Status Quo

While the staff's proposal is a big improvement over the registrar's suggestion, there doesn't appear to be any good reason to change the status quo. One of the main benefits of making the alteration, the registrar contends, is that the problems associated with ending the spring exam period on Memorial Day weekend will be fixed. Huh? If exams now end on a Saturday and the motion moves the last final up by one day, then the laws of the calendar dictate that exams end on Friday--the beginning of Memorial Day weekend. Unless we're missing something here (after all, we're only Harvard students), we'll still be stuck taking exams and moving out on Memorial Day weekend.

The staff's proposal doesn't correct that situation, and it creates a further problem. While many people view reading period to be too long and superfluous, chopping off a day will cause more harm than good. We all know that professors won't be dissuaded from unnecessarily cramming in extra material and assignments, so losing a day to get the work done only hurts the students. And while we understand the plight of those who have religious conflicts, it doesn't seem like a good trade-off to help 20 and inconvenience 2,000.

Since Harvard is set in its traditions, it should stick with the one it has right now rather than make the proposed changes. What would be most beneficial is full calendar reform with fall exams in December. If you start school three weeks earlier, you maintain the full lengths of both reading and exam periods. You also don't have to worry about Saturdays or Memorial Day, and you get a real intersession--not the five- or six-day recovery period that exists right now. But Harvard's administrators never want to accept that point, so they may as well stay with the status quo.