University Registrar Mark Hewitt sent an all campus e-mail Wednesday outlining official changes in the pass/fail policy voted on by the Faculty Senate last semester. Hewitt said students will no longer have to take a minimum of four courses per semester to take one of those classes for pass/fail credit. His e-mail also stated the faculty voted to preserve the anonymity of those taking courses pass/fail.

The e-mail also read that, unlike in the past, students must physically go to the registrar and fill out a form declaring the pass/fail option. The removal of this anonymity was debated by the faculty and Student Union last spring.

Controversy arose after the Undergraduate Curriculum Committee (UCC), chaired by Dean of Arts and Sciences Adam Jaffe, proposed that anonymity be removed because of a conflict with the new registration software, PeopleSoft.

The Justice quoted Jaffe last year as saying: "Though discussions began with PeopleSoft, we said, 'let's put PeopleSoft aside, we haven't looked at pass/fail in many years. We should now decide on what is the best pass/fail system that we think we can possibly have, and then return to the question of whether there are problems with doing that in PeopleSoft.' "

On March 11, the Faculty Senate held a meeting in which they debated anonymity. They eventually voted to send the proposal back to the UCC, rejecting that anonymity be removed.

Some proponents of removing anonymity said that it would better allow professors to work with students on an individual basis. They also said if they knew a student was taking a course pass/fail, they would be able to encourage him or her to take the class for a grade.

Last year, Prof. Jacob Cohen (AMST) said that he did not want to know if students were taking his courses pass/fail, so as to be equally hard on everybody.



- By Joshua Adland