Changes to Latin Honors Include Breadth Requirements

Continued from page 2 received a number of lower grades from exploring unfamiliar subjects or having a couple rough semesters.

Indeed, according to the CEP’s proposal, nearly 40 percent of all May graduates in the classes of 2017 to 2021 had a median grade higher than A(the requirement for summa honors), and nearly 75 percent of these graduates had a median grade equal to or higher than A- (the requirement for magna honors).

Furthermore, while only 39.1 percent of the graduates who had been recommended magna by their department were actually able to keep that designation (with the rest dropping to cum laude), 94.3 percent of these candidates would have been awarded magna cum laude honors had the new median grade criterion been applied. The percentage of summa-recommended students receiving summa cum laude honors also would have increased, from 80.2 percent to 89.6 percent.

Epstein noted to The Student that a major concern for the committee is that the new grade criterion provides less of a check on departments making high numbers of summa and magna recommendations. “Some might argue that the value of the summa and magna will be reduced, since it is likely that (many) more students will receive those levels of Latin honors,” she wrote.

While less selective than the class rank criterion, the median grade criterion nonetheless preserves a college-wide achievement component to the designation of Latin honors, which the CEP felt was important since Latin honors are ultimately awarded by the college and not by individual departments, Epstein wrote.

The newly introduced breadth requirement is also motivated by the idea that Latin honors should reflect the college’s evaluation of a student’s accomplish - ment. “[T]he College’s definition of excellence in coursework, and hence summa or magna honors, includes the willingness to explore unfamiliar intellectual and/ or creative fields,” the CEP wrote in its proposal. “Regarding the proposed breadth criterion, we believe that it should be a modest but still meaningful requirement, to ensure that students the College declares worthy of high honors are indeed living up to the liberal arts ideal of exploring the curriculum beyond their own fields of expertise.”

According to the proposal, only 51 percent of all students and 57 percent of all honors candidates in the May graduating classes of 2017 to 2021 would have satisfied a breadth requirement similar to the one that was passed. (As the data was collected early in the CEP’s discussions, the categorization of subject codes differed slightly from the final version.) Arts was the most commonly lacking category, with 38 percent of all graduates taking less than one full course or two half courses in the arts.

“This decision [to add a breadth requirement] acknowledges that we faculty sense that we are not doing as good a job at advising as we might, because even though we make great cases for students to take a variety of subjects in fascinating fields, students shy away from certain areas that we believe our excellent colleagues teach very very well,” wrote Courtright, who noted that the CEP discussed the requirement at length given the long-standing tradition of the open curriculum.

She added that the CEP decided to count courses taken pass/ fail toward the requirement in order to make it less burdensome for students who “really feared” one of the disciplinary categories.

The breadth requirement was particularly contentious among the faculty, who discussed the CEP’s proposal at the faculty meetings held on Dec. 6 and Feb. 7.

Some faculty members expressed concern that the breadth requirement was a threat to the college’s open curriculum and may start a larger shift toward the implementation of distribution requirements across the college.

At the Dec. 6 meeting, William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Jurisprudence and Political Science Austin Sarat proposed an amendment to drop the breadth requirement and determine eligibility for honors solely based on the median grade criterion. The amendment failed by a vote of 46-75.

Other objections to the breadth requirement included concerns about the difficulty of scheduling courses to meet the requirement, as well as about the restrictions on courses that count toward the requirement.

“If a student only decides to write a thesis late in their junior year, without having previously considered this possibility, scheduling courses in their last year to satisfy this breadth requirement may be difficult,” Assistant Professor of Computer Science Matteo Riondato wrote in a statement to The Student. He added that the exclusion of transfer and Five College courses from the requirement disadvantages transfer students and students who want to study subjects not offered at Amherst, such as some foreign languages and musical instruments.

At the Feb. 7 meeting, Rion - dato advocated for an amendment to the breadth requirement that would reduce the requirement to at least one course in three out of four of the categories. Robert Benedetto, the William J. Walker professor of mathematics and chair of the CEP, noted that the CEP found this to be essentially the same as not having a breadth requirement at all. He also explained that non-Amherst courses were excluded due to the difficulty that would come with categorizing them. The amendment failed by voice vote.

Faculty also raised concerns about whether the arts departments are sufficiently resourced to handle the influx of demand that would come from instituting the breadth requirement. Epstein confirmed at the Feb. 7 meeting that there are indeed enough available slots in arts classes to support the new requirement.

The categorization of departments under the requirement was another point of contention. Christopher van den Berg, the Aliki Perroti and Seth Frank ’55 professor in classical studies, argued that language courses are too unlike the other humanities to be categorized with the humanities and also expressed concern that the new policy would formalize divisions between disciplines.

At the Feb. 7 meeting, Associate Professor of American Studies Robert Hayashi urged the faculty not to focus too much on the possible negative consequences of the policy, advocating for the breadth requirement as a way to encourage academic risk-taking and exposure to new perspectives at a school where students often “burrow into” their majors and disciplines.

Benedetto also acknowledged that the new policy had its imperfections, but likewise called on the faculty to “not let the perfect become the enemy of the good.”

While the faculty ran out of time to vote on the proposal at the Dec. 6 meeting, the proposal passed 68-48 at the end of the meeting on Feb. 7.

“The discussion made clear to me that the faculty remain committed to the open curriculum, and are also seeking a way to encourage more students to take advantage of what it offers — a chance to study widely in a variety of disciplines and methods,” President Michael Elliott wrote in a statement to The Student. “The resulting policy is an attempt to find a balance between those priorities, and the new course requirements for Latin honors constitute a very modest change.”

“The College faculty continually evaluate the curriculum and the policies of the College, and the administration will work with them to observe the effects of this policy change over time as part of the work of faculty governance,” he added.