Faculty Votes on AAL, Pass/D/Fail

At the Jan. 15 Plenary Meeting the faculty passed resolutions that reinstated the Pass/D/Fail option, set to expire this year, and changed the cultures and civilizations set of distribution requirements. The last iteration of Pass/D/ Fail (P/D/F) expired on Dec. 31 after a six semester trial period. In new legislation authored by the Education Affairs Committee (EAC) and amended by faculty at the meeting, students will retain two uses of the option, but will now be able to choose whether or not to invoke it in the fourth week of a semester (rather than the second week). None of restrictions on P/D/F will change, and students will draw on their five allocated “non-standard grades,” which include high school credits and for credit internships.

The resolution initially presented at the meeting gave students only one use of P/D/F. The EAC viewed this as a compromise for those faculty opposed to the P/D/F option. Professor of Psychology Jason Arndt, a member of the EAC, and Vice President of Student Affairs and Dean of the College Katy Smith Abbott said that the reduction from two to one courses would be interpreted by students as discordant with the College’s focus on stress. The amendment passed overwhelmingly in support of two uses of P/D/F.

The new set of cultures and civilizations requirements expands the previous three regional categories to six. For almost 15 years the categories were comparative (CMP), North America (NOR), Europe (EUR) and Africa, Asia and Latin America (AAL) which also included together Middle East, and the Caribbean. The six new designations are South and Southeast Asia, including the Pacific (SOA); North Asia including China, Korea, Japan and the Asian steppes (NOA); Middle East and North Africa (MDE); Sub-Saharan Africa (SAF); Europe (EUR); The Americas (AMR).

Some faculty at the meeting expressed hesitation over not dividing North, Central and South America. Others felt that the previous NOR designation had problematically privileged North American culture. Others were vocal that any system with such arbitrary regions would conflate incongruous cultures (i.e. Japan and China in NOA) and that it would be the instructor’s responsibility to distinguish the studied culture within the course’s designation.

Chair of the Student Educational Affairs Committee Jiya Pandya ’17 was an original member of Midd Included, the student organization committed to reforming the cultures and civilizations requirement. In the last two years she and other students designed and advocated for new regional requirements.

“Our proposal was by no means perfect, and nor are these categories, yet to me they symbolize not only a change in our College and its growing understanding of the value and respect of all cultures but also a clear sign that student voices truly make a difference in curricular change,” Pandya wrote in a Facebook post on Jan. 15.