Word: exam
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...agree that trimming exam period from nine days to eight days would create the already mentioned problems, but I have to respectfully dissent on the grounds that trimming reading period by a day is not enough. If the administration were to comply with this request, it would effectively dodge the real issue: calendar reform. Reading period is no longer fulfilling its original goals and should therefore be reconsidered...
...started on September 5 instead of Sept. 18, had only 13 weeks of classes instead of 14 (Princeton only has 12) and had 11 days of reading period before the winter vacation, then exam period could remain nine days and be held before winter break. Spring term would begin in mid-January and end well before Memorial Day. As times change, so should policies...
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...
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...
...level of honors awarded to concentrators used to be based 40 percent on grades, 40 percent on thesis and 20 percent on the general exam. The department decided that the grades earned in a dozen or so classes over the course of several years were a more meaningful indicator than an exam lasting a few hours...