Rough Sex?

Some students enrolled this semester in Science B-29, “Evolution of Human Nature” complain that “Sex” has gotten rougher, but professors assert that the experience is as pleasing as it’s ever been.

The class has long been known as a gut. Greg D. Henning ’02, who took the class in 1999, says the final was so easy that most students finished prematurely, with more than an hour left in the exam session. “One of the things that I still can’t get over is that it had a multiple-choice midterm and final,” he says.

While the tests are still multiple-choice, many students this year bemoan what they perceive as the increased difficulty of the course. “I thought it was going to be a lot easier,” sighs Elizabeth W. Peterson ’05. But it seems to have just gotten harder and harder.

Rumors abound that Professor of Psychology Marc D. Hauser, one of two instructors who teaches the course, is under pressure to deflate grades because of his role on committees that are pushing for grading reform. “I heard from students that he was planning on restructuring the course and making it much more difficult, at least in terms of grade distributions,” kvetches Abigail M. Wild ’04.

Hauser denies the innuendo. “Yes, I am on Faculty Council. Yes, I do worry about grade inflation. But no, I am not out to lower the grades in B-29,” he says. “The grading is exactly on track with all previous years.”

For now, it remains to be seen how this semester will go down in the annals of “Sex.”