Word: registrars
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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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...
Last week at a meeting of the Committee on Undergraduate Education (CUE), Harvard Registrar Georgene B. Herschbach presented a proposal which called for reducing spring and fall final exam periods from nine to eight days. The proposal is apparently designed to solve two problems with the current exam schedule...
...leery, however, of potential problems. The most serious side effect of trimming down final exam periods would be that more students would have to deal with two or even three exams on a single day (known in registrar parlance as doubles and triples). Any students knows that having three finals in one day can be seriously hazardous to one's grade point average. Supervisor of Examinations Thomas Lynch is aware of this problem, and believes that computer optimization can minimize the number of additional doubles and triples necessary. He also mentioned that conflicts could be avoided by designating more classes...
Trimming reading period would solve all our problems. Exams could remain at nine days long, the registrar wouldn't have to go through contortions to prevent doubles and triples, and the Memorial Day/religious conflict problems would be solved. Plus, we'd have that luscious extra day of intersession. And finally, we would have taken a symbolic step towards admitting that reading period is far too long--and far too subject to professors' wills--to begin with...
...Simons said he would like to see the registrar take even more steps to accommodate student needs...