Report Proposes 4-1-4 Calendar

First semester exams would conclude before winter break and January would be kept open for a potential “alternative term” under the scheme recommended by a University-wide committee on calendar reform.

The lengthy report, as described by Professor of Law Harry S. Martin ’65, also proposes starting fall classes in the beginning of September, adding a day to the Thanksgiving break and holding Commencement in May.

The committee—composed of 13 professors and five students—recommends that the month of January be left free of standard curricular requirements. And the decision to hold a formal January term, often called a J-term, or stay on vacation would be “left up to each school,” Martin said.

The report includes a calendar prototype, which proposes a 4M-1M-4M model, with 62 days of class for each semester, five to eight days of reading period and an eight-day exam period, according to a source closely involved with the committee’s planning.

The source added that the prototype works on a rotation, so that some years the fall term would begin on Sept. 2 and end on Dec. 3, and in other years, the semester would begin on Sept. 7 and end on Dec. 9. Fall exam period would run between Dec. 11 and Dec. 19 in one year, and Dec. 15 and Dec. 22 in the other.

In one of the years, the spring term would begin on Feb. 2 and end on May 4, with final exams between the 13th and 20th and Commencement on May 28.

The one-month J-term would fall in between the fall and spring semesters.

Discussion of a J-term actually predates the formation of the calendar committee, which occurred last September, according to Dean of the College Benedict H. Gross ’71.

“We were considering J-term before the calendar committee was announced, and were surprised to find that it had been adopted with enthusiasm by so many of the other faculties at Harvard,” Gross wrote in an e-mail.

The report is slated to be released Monday, according to committee member and Jones Professor of American Studies Lizabeth Cohen.

The committee’s proposal is scheduled to go before the Faculty Council—the Dean of the Faculty’s 18-member advisory body—next Wednesday in preparation for a calendar presentation at April’s Faculty meeting.

While the Faculty may be gearing up to debate potential changes, the University’s Governing Boards have the final say in deciding changes to the calendars of Harvard’s schools, according to the bylaws of the University.

But Undergraduate Council President Matthew W. Mahan ’05 warned that the proposed changes might not serve the interests of undergraduates. A Crimson poll conducted in December of 363 undergraduates showed that students are split on moving exams: 45 percent favor moving exams before break, while 40 percent prefer keeping the current schedule.

“Based on what I have heard, I am concerned that the College is going to try to force a calendar that is administratively simpler but not in students’ best interest,” he wrote in an e-mail. “Three things student really value are having a week-long Thanksgiving break, a real winter break and a spring term that allows them to start summer plans at a reasonable date. I’m worried that this calendar doesn’t do enough to address any of those needs.”

TIME FOR CHANGE?

The calendar committee was charged with an eye toward synchronizing calendars across the University’s schools.

“The more voices we can get in favor of a coordinated calendar, the better,” University Provost Steven E. Hyman told a meeting of graduate student government leaders two weeks ago.

He added that facilitating enrollment across schools was the driving goal of reexamining the calendar.

“The whole thing driving the common calendar is cross-registration,” he also told them. “Without the calendar as the backbone of cross-registration, it will be very difficult to do anything else that’s meaningful.”

In this year’s annual letter to the Faculty, Dean of the Faculty William C. Kirby wrote that increased interaction with other faculties would serve all the students of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS).

“Since our sister Faculties include scholars in core FAS disciplines, from cell biology to sociology, our students may benefit by increased educational cooperation across the University,” Kirby wrote. “Such efforts could be enhanced by better coordination of our Schools’ academic calendars.”

Kirby could not be reached for comment last night.

Calling January a “stressed out period,” Gross said moving exams before winter break was a significant improvement for undergraduates.

“Exams before Christmas offer students a real break,” he said. “Whether or not we adopt a J-term, I’m convinced that finishing the first term in December will be a great plus for everyone’s mental health.”

But Mahan had a less rosy view of the J-term proposal.

“I suspect the majority of students across the University would prefer a three or four-week winter break and an end date in early May,” Mahan said.

He added that the calendar committee’s focus on facilitating cross-registration might not benefit undergraduates.

“The issue of cross-registration is tricky. On the one hand, I appreciate the administrative ease and the fact that many students want to take classes at various graduate schools in the University,” he said. “On the other hand, I would strongly caution the administration against making any changes that further ‘pre-professionalize’ the Harvard academic experience. We get enough pre-professionalism in our extracurriculars and I worry that with this change students would start competing on the basis of how many classes they were taking at the Medical School, for example.”

Kirby also noted in his annual letter that the bureaucratic challenge of matching up calendars shouldn’t be insurmountable.

“One wonders: if all of China can exist in one time zone, might we not imagine that Harvard’s calendars could manage greater symmetry?” Kirby wrote.

Committee chair and Pforzheimer University Professor Sidney Verba ’52 could not be reached for comment last night. But two weeks ago, Verba declined to discuss the specific points of the report, but said it gave careful context to its recommendations.

“The important thing about the report is [that] it’s not just a series of recommendations but a series of recommendations with an analysis of how we got there,” Verba said two weeks ago.

And Cohen added that the report was cautiously written.

“It does make a recommendation, and then it says there are options within that,” Cohen said. “There was a lot of attention given to the way these things were worded.”

The report was originally scheduled to go before the Faculty Council on March 10, when it was on the agenda for the now-cancelled March Faculty meeting. But Verba said the committee opted to take two extra weeks with the report when the time constraint of the March Faculty meeting disappeared.

“We were putting the final touches on the report, or at least having the various members look at it and making changes and the like,” Verba said at the time. “It was very close to the wire.”

—Staff writer Stephen M. Marks can be reached at marks@fas.harvard.edu.

—Staff writer Lauren A. E. Schuker schuker@fas.harvard.edu.