Changing the Average
The College's decision in 1994 to publish the course median grades on transcripts attempted to provide a context to judge students' marks and to hold each professor accountable for grade inflation. This decision failed to curb the grade inflation problem but served as a stepping stone from which to take further action.
Notable disparities between departmental grade point averages indicate that a greater effort must be taken toward grading parity across all academic disciplines at the College. While a biology major may compete for different jobs than a music major, both vie for the same academic honors -- so the College must address the unfairness of the current situation.
We do not recommend the implementation of a mandatory College-wide grade distribution. But it is essential that academic departments monitor grade distribution and publish department summary statistics on an annual basis -- students should not have to conduct extensive research to obtain this information. Furthermore, the Dean of the Faculty should pressure departments with abnormal GPAs to review their grading practices. Such actions will provide the College's grading policy with much needed consistency.
Not an Act of Art
During a meeting Monday, some studio art majors tried to come to grips with the vandalism of the department's workshop by rationalizing the crime as the artistry of a person frustrated with the department as a whole. "It is the expression of someone close to us, by an artist," proclaimed one student.
Attempting to justify the wholesale mutilation of artwork hurts the efforts of the individual artist. It is unproductive to call this attack an act of art or to couch it in the language of art criticism. If the culprit or culprits did in fact intend this as performance art, they are playing a cruel joke on the art department and the students whose works were irreversably altered. Any attempt to rationalize this act is bankrupt.
Though the systematic and knowledgeable way in which the crime was committed may point within the department, it should not lead to any sort of justification of the act. Artists should have as much respect for others' works as for their own. This vandalism is not art. Whether a member of the art department or a resident of the Upper Valley, the vandal is a criminal and nothing more.
