Academic department heads met with top administrators yesterday and discussed the Fall term housing crisis, the budget and transcript changes.
Dean of Faculty James Wright reported that the Committee on Enrollment is concerned that this fall's student housing crisis may occur again next year.
"For a whole range of reasons ... and I am convinced there are quite a few, the Fall term is a more attractive term for students," Wright, who chairs the committee, said.
Wright said there are a number of ways the College can reduce the number of students who elect to be in residence during the fall term. The possibilities include placing limitations on student D-plan choices and ensuring that prerequisites for majors are not offered exclusively in the Fall term.
In the past, students were required to take at least one Fall term off. But Wright said he is "not eager to go back to that system."
"None of us are feeling good about the options we have," Wright said.
Wright said a committee of administrators, faculty and students will be formed next week to address short-term solutions to the housing problem caused by a higher enrollment during the Fall term.
The committee will meet for six weeks and report its findings to the Committee on Enrollment before Thanksgiving. It will be led by the College Registrar Thomas Bickel.
Faculty members discussed some of the reasons why Fall term enrollments might be higher -- including rush, course offerings and professors' schedules.
During a discussion of grades at the College, Bickel announced that the revised transcripts, which will display each student's grade along the median grade for the course and the number of students enrolled, will not be available until Winter term because of technical delays.
The transcript change was approved last year by faculty and will only this year's freshman class and subsequent classes.
Bickell said the Committee on Instruction will soon discuss a proposal to publicly release the median grade of each course.
Provost Lee Bollinger and Vice President and Treasurer Lyn Hutton discussed the progress of the budget for the 1996 fiscal year.
Hutton said that although initial projections call for a $1 million deficit, she said this is the best starting point in recent years and added that she is more confident this year than last year that the budget would be balanced.
"The red ink projected at this time is the lowest ... out-of-balance starting point that I can remember in my professional career," Hutton said.
Hutton said the $1 million represents an expectation of the increase in the amount of financial aid the College will need to distribute next year. She said financial aid represents approximately 17 percent of the College's total budget.
Hutton said the College finished the 1994 fiscal year with a "modest" surplus of approximately $101,000 from a total budget of nearly $3 million, the third consecutive year of a surplus.
She attributed the surplus to the success of the Alumni Fund, which she said can not be counted on to be as successful again this year.
The Committee of Chairs approved several reports, which were not released, before breaking into a closed executive session.
