Brown and White Vol. 85 no. 38

              lehigh university brown and white tuesday march 5 1974 never on sunday there is no doubt that the energy crisis is going to seriously affect american lifestyles the closing of gas stations on sunday was one of the earliest con servation methods and thus one whose effects are already being felt the time has come for lehigh to adjust to this situation while it is impossible to eliminate all major sunday events at the university as many as can be moved should be moved one such occasion looms in the near future and must be dealt with as soon as possible — the residence halls office's proposed sunday return from the march vacation another is further off but will require more planning to change — un iversity day graduation according to a recent handout the residence halls will not re open until sunday march 17 at 1 p.m this would work a hardship on any parent expecting to drive a student back and also on those students making long irips on their own in cars with small gas tanks it should be no problem to unlock the doors a day or two early to allow early returns any security problems this might create can be overcome with added vigilance university day scheduled for sunday may 26 may be harder to change but it is even more im portant to do so more than anything graduation is a day for proud parents many of whom have footed quite a bill over four years only the most optimistic among us can predict that the gasoline situation will stabilize by then it is up to the university to move graduation to the thursday or friday before or the monday or tuesday after the scheduled date to accommodate the great number of parents who must travel long distances because of all the people involved speakers parents students alumni now is the time to begin planning there may very well be other events in the same category if so it is the university's task to determine them and act ac cordingly the energy crisis cannot be willed away but its blows can be softened not too far the proposed resolution by the forum's communications committee justly criticizes the university's official newspaper lehigh horizons calling on the administration to provide the 39,000 readers of horizons with more in-depth campus coverage the resolution suggests that an extension of horizons present role or that occasional supplements be used the resolution is fine but there is a limit to what action should be taken forum members should not become over-eager in their at tempts to change horizons course direct control should be beyond the forum's reach and the independence of the horizons editor must be guaranteed both by the administration and the forum > while the forum certainly has the right and duty to suggest a direction for horizons it should not seek the opportunity to tamper with journalistic freedom grading system needs revision by lauren eisenberg — we don't want rationing — it would be too conipliratec campus lore sometimes unfair simply isn't the best word to describe the grading scale on an exam or paper you just got back tough break just doesn't fully capture the feeling you have when you see the guy next to you come out of an exam grinning knowing that his 70 or 80 per cent gets him the same letter grade as you with your 79 or 89 per cent maybe it doesn't have to be that way changing the system isn't always impossible the educational policy committee considered such a change as long as four years ago with the assistance of j d ryan professor of geology the committee did a little homework on grading systems of about 15 universities academically comparable to lehigh and came up with some surprising results one thing they learned was that lehigh students overall cums at that time were two to three tenths lower than those of the other colleges according to ryan who chaired the committee investigating this situation most schools averaged 2.5 to 2.6 where lehigh brought up the rear with an estimated 2.34 cum sensing the need for an exercise in fair play the committee suggested an easing up of faculty marking policy just until the scale balanced back again ryan fears the scale may have gone too far in the other direction . lehigh's overall cum now reads at about 2.75 a whopping one to two tenths above the average of compared colleges ryan suggested that lehigh's academic reputation could be marred if this trend continues plusses and minuses were suggested as an alternate route to grading inequities but enough interest wasn't enlisted for definitive action to be taken ryan made a proposal for plus and minus grades as late as last october suggesting the following grades a,a 8+,8,8 c+,c,c d+,d,d f after discussion of the idea the issue was tabled because of lack of student support the issue came up again at a faculty meeting two weeks ago robert folk professor of physics asked ed pol to revive the dormant issue of plus and minus grades at lehigh so that faculty members would have a charce to discuss it folk followed his suggestion up with a written request to ed pol proposing that a 3 be added to each grade when a plus was deserved and that a 3 be subtracted for every minus grade assigned it's up to ed pol to take the ball and keep it rolling now some problems arise when you think about the meanings of these newly proposed grades though the university system dictates that an a means excellent b good c continuation competency d un satisfactory but passing and f failure this means that with an a the student is doing somewhat less than excellent but better than the highest level of good these are fine shades of meaning if they exist at all and how about a d that would mean that the student's work is unsatisfactory but that it's better at being unsatisfactory than the guy with the plain d not to mention the one with a d who is worse than his unsatisfactory peers yet passes the course the idea of plus and minus grading can be used to help lehigh students and professors but not if over-applied some letter grades like as and ds simply don't need plus and minus embellishments most problems in grading students seem to crop up at the b and c levels that is where pluses and minuses could best be employed a system of the following grades might better serve lehigh student and faculty needs a 8+,8,8 c+,c,c d f the important point is that some action be taken on revising lehigh's grading system it's as simple as a b b c lehigh university th rrown nnrl whitf university center offices bethlehem pa i he piwyyin oho yyni i c telephone m6433l david l brown ann martinson jeff bloom howie korsen bruce kiefer editor-in-chief business manager senior news editor sports editor layout editor marty baron bill white kevin flanagan bill pi rk beth troy editorial page editor associate editor new editor photo editor desk editor larry dries bobooldich heather rodale bill hemelt kdfiidlbr 0 " mafiafifiq cdttor tamocvsfv editor fo#tw#s editor layout editor 3#nli>r raxwvtam entered as second claw matter at the _ ...... , „ _. . . 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