For three days in May 1969, a series of faculty meetings addressed reforms to the curriculum that had been developed in a massive Group Independent Study Project three years earlier. On the second day of the meetings - which were held in Sayles Hall and partly broadcast on the Main Green by loudspeakers - classes were cancelled and hundreds of students cheered and booed outside Sayles in response to the debate within. The 80 students and 15 faculty members of the GISP produced a 418-page paper on education at Brown. By the end of the meetings, the faculty had approved the New Curriculum.
That was the right way to make decisions about the curriculum.
Now, the grading policy approved during those meetings over 30 years ago faces potentially dramatic changes, yet the beginnings of the debate saw alarmingly little discussion. In December, we breathed a sigh of relief when the College Curriculum Council - a body made up of a handful of students, faculty and administrators - postponed making a recommendation on allowing pluses and minuses into Brown's grading system. The CCC will discuss the issue again Tuesday. Once the CCC makes its recommendation, the Faculty Executive Committee, which has no student members, will make a decision on the matter.
The CCC first examined the grading issue in view of a 2002 survey, conducted by the Sheridan Center for Teaching and Learning, that found 80 percent of Brown faculty and graduate students were in favor of adding pluses and minuses to grades. A 2003 CCC report on grading called for extensive consultation with students through polls, forums and surveys. The consultation never happened.
We wonder why Dean of the College Paul Armstrong, who chairs the CCC, drafted and introduced a proposal to add pluses and minuses to Brown's grading system without following the 2003 recommendations. We also wonder if this is the right time for the dean of the college, whose resignation was announced just two weeks ago, to lead a discussion about grading at Brown.
The CCC should follow its own recommendations and undertake a major project to discuss grading with undergraduates, who will be far more affected by any change than the faculty. Students live with their transcripts for their entire lives, beginning the moment they walk out of the Van Wickle Gates. Open up Sayles Hall and let the meetings begin - that's the spirit of '69.
