USG discusses diversity of majors among A.B. students

Last night's USG Senate meeting focused on diversity of A.B. departmental majors in the University.

USG members discussed two particular concerns University officials — why students steer away from certain majors and what can be done to diversify the distribution of majors at the University.

Several speculations were presented as to why students might choose certain majors over others.

Students often choose to major in a subject area that has several applications in the real world rather than limiting themselves by choosing a narrow field, one theory supposed.

In addition, many of the A.B. sciences have large lecture classes as prerequisites, which may deter students who do not want to take those prerequisites if they are not sure they want to major in that particular department. Instead, they opt for departments with fewer prerequisites.

One possible solution proposed was to decrease some of the prerequisites for the less popular majors in order to hopefully attract more students.

Also, freshman and sophomores need to be aware of the wide option of majors available to them, as well as the flexibility intrinsic to a liberal arts education.

Other business of the meeting included approval of the Mission Statement Amendment, initiated by Olivier Kamanda '03.

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The senate also approved an investigation of computers purchased through the Student Computer Initiative and the failure rates of such computers for members of the Class of 2004.