Word: hpc
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...addition, the Faculty and Administration both generally agree that students should remain in advisory capacities anyway. If a student has relevant opinions on a specific proposal, a committee may invite him to testify, but never to remain later and join in a binding vote. The HPC this year succeeded in all its substantive educational proposals before the Faculty Committee on Educational Polity, but it failed in its attempt to gain regular membership...
...issue in the fall was pass-fail and when the year began the HPC's chances of getting anything passed looked bleak. The spring befeore had seemed a real boggle as the new HPC repudiated a pass-fail plan by their predecessors which was close to adoption...
...HPC shrewdly dropped the financially tricky rider of a free fifth course (part of their original scheme) and were given a political boost by Yale's highly publicized "pass-fail" plan late in the fall. More important was a lot of routine political legwork--testimony before the CEP, interviews with Dean Ford and other CEP members. By the time the proposal to allow every student to take one of his courses ungraded came to a vote in November there was no argument. The CEP approved it unanimously and after a few weeks to arrange implementation, the Faculty passed...
Less conspicuous than its recommendations to the CEP were a series of influential HPC department audits. These detailed written studies of what ails Harvard's various fields of concentration have become consistently potent politically. An audit of the History Department in the fall dealt a death blow to general examinations which were to be required of Juniors. The most remarkable HPC audit was one of the Department of Architectural Sciences. Composed by students who were in close consultation with Faculty in the department, it wrote the design for a new department of Visual and Environmental Studies which the Faculty created...
...HPC's effectiveness can be variously explained: by the hero, elite, or secrecy theory. The hero theory credits the HPC achievements to its 1967-68 chairman, Henry R. Norr '68, an extraordinarily shrewd and articulate advocate of the student proposals. The elite theory holds that the HPC gets things done because its members aren't elected (they are chosen by House Masters and House committees) and are therefore more capable than the kind of student who goes in for campaigning in student elections. A final explanation of the HPC's success (held by many of the members) is that they...