USG scrutinizes calendar options

The USG discussed at length but failed to reach any consensus on the University's recent proposals for overhauling the academic calendar in a meeting Sunday night.

The meeting comes less than a week after The Daily Princetonian published drafts of two new calendars that Dean of the College Nancy Malkiel proposed last month to academic department chairs and program directors.

The first plan, called Calendar B, includes a midterm week free of classes, Fall Break integrated into Thanksgiving and Dean's Date in the middle of exam week instead of before it. Calendar C, the second proposal, makes more dramatic revisions, beginning the fall semester in late August and ending it with exams before winter beak. Calendar A is the current calendar.

USG academics chair Caitlin Sullivan '07, a member of Malkiel's Committee on the Course of Study, stressed that the committee's final recommendation to the faculty would not have to be exclusively one plan or the other, but could be "a combination of all three."

She added that "anything the faculty has voted will not take into effect until four years after the vote," because calendars are determined four years in advance.

There appears to be little agreement among department heads over which calendar is best, though most of those interviewed believe that Calendar C is the weakest of the three.

USG officers were also divided. Campus and community affairs chair Sarah Breslow '08 initiated a discussion about the possibility of self-scheduled exams, citing the Honor Code as an effective guard against cheating.

"The whole reason our exam period is two-and-a-half weeks long is because of exam conflicts," said Breslow, who is also an associate editor at the 'Prince.'

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But vice president Rob Biederman '08 said that since not everyone abides by the code, self-scheduled exams might unfairly disadvantage honest students. Sullivan said University officials shared Biederman's worries.

"The administration's response has been that it puts too much stress on the Honor Code," Sullivan said. "The liberty of self-registered exams at a school of this size might be too much."

The USG was also divided over Fall Break. Undergraduate life chair Caroline Chopko '07 defended keeping a full, separate week of vacation.

"For seniors, having that week to figure out grad schools, GREs, thesis work and having the week to go somewhere, is wonderful," Chopko said.

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Breslow, though, said the current calendar breaks up the semester unnecessarily, and Class of 2007 senator Ashley Pavlic expressed concern about cheaper fares for students traveling home.

The USG also discussed further steps toward reaching recommendations on the calendar. Chopko proposed studying the "different opinions between groups of people, like a concrete list of pros and cons that groups like engineers, humanities students, athletes, seniors and freshmen are considering."

U-Councilor Lawrence Darby '08 warned against focusing too much on anecdotal evidence. Instead, he said, the USG should conduct a "quantitative analysis" based on data from a USG survey on academics, the results of which have not been made public.