Word: extracurricular
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Almost every student at Harvard has his or her extracurricular activity: Some participate in cultural groups, others write for publications, and still others work within our many political organizations. All of these organizations are either funded—many of them amply—by centuries’ old endowments, by the $260,000 in student group grants that the Undergraduate Council provides each year, or by fundraisers such as dances and movie nights. And for the large percentage of students who compete on Harvard’s 41 varsity athletic teams, the Department of Athletics is the source...
...Last fall the Task Force for General Education, made up of Harvard Faculty, two students, and an assistant dean, met to determine the future direction of the undergraduate curriculum. Based on the undergraduate community’s apparent passion for extracurricular involvement, their proposal recommended that a committee be formed to explore ways to link students’ existing activities to their current coursework. This differs from the existing Bok Center program in that it lets students take initiative in relating their non-academic pursuits to classes instead of offering courses with a specific outside component...
...Task Force’s proposal has some students afraid that the initiative would mix their academic and extracurricular lives unnecessarily. A Feb. 15 Crimson staff editorial voiced concerns that “the only thing that such a policy would accomplish would be to bureaucratize extracurricular life at Harvard...
...It’s the specific use of the word extracurricular that I have a problem with,” says Rowan W. Dorin ’07, a history concentrator. “I only disagree with activity-based learning if it integrates existing Harvard activities. If you want to teach a class on Russian drama and have everyone perform a play by Chekov, that’s great...
...important to note that the aim of the Task Force’s proposal is not a forced integration of extracurricular and academic pursuits. Instead, it seeks to give students the opportunity to link the two if they choose. According to Kemper Professor of American History James T. Kloppenburg, “The goal is to give students more flexibility to plan their own undergraduate programs, experiment with various alternatives, and make changes. Locking students into a rigid curriculum ...is now seen as a problem rather than a goal...