Students enrolled in “General Chemistry” will likely be camping in the library rather than reveling in the sunshine or attending the many concerts on campus over Green Key weekend, as they have a midterm on Sunday evening. Because Green Key is not listed as an official college holiday on the registrar’s website, many professors said they did not consider the big weekend when creating their syllabi.
“General Chemistry” professor Dean Wilcox, in addition to other professors whose classes will be having midterms over the next few days, wrote in an email that he did not know the date of the big weekend when scheduling exams for the course. He also wrote that factors such as logical breaks in course material, lab schedules and exam room availability contributed to the decision to hold the midterm on this specific date.
“Green Key weekend is not a College-sponsored event and does not appear on the registrar’s website,” Wilcox wrote. “It was not considered when planning the dates of our exams, which have been scheduled since the start of term.”
Earth sciences professor Edward Meyer also cited that the event is not an official College holiday when explaining his logic for scheduling a midterm in his introductory earth sciences class “How the Earth Works” this Friday.
“Dartmouth has very short terms and EARS 1 covers a lot of ground, so it is important that the course takes advantage of every possible class period,” Meyer wrote. “This provides students with a meaningful exposure to the course material.”
Psychology professor Catherine Cramer, whose class is cancelled Friday, said she already had course work planned for this week’s x-hour, but did not know the date of Green Key when making this decision.
“This just happened to coincide with Green Key,” she said. “I don’t think most of us cancel classes just because it is a big weekend.”
English professor Cynthia Huntington said that her decision to move her class to the x-hour period was due to a meeting out of the town that she needs to attend, not because of the Green Key weekend.
Biology professor and chair of the ad hoc committee on grading practices Mark McPeek said that while Greek Key weekend is an opportunity for students to relax, they should still prioritize academics. The committee McPeek chairs submitted a proposal to administrators yesterday about how to encourage student engagement in classes and combat grade inflation, but it did not specifically address proposals for class schedules around big weekends.
“There is no reason students shouldn’t be able to have fun on the weekends, but you still have to get your work done,” McPeek said.
Elana Folbe ’15, whose anthropology class is cancelled this Friday, said that while she appreciates the mental break Green Key offers, students who attend class on the Friday of a big weekend are often unprepared or unengaged.
“I think it is cool to have a weekend where we can all have a break so we can enjoy Dartmouth in the spring together,” she said. “But I am usually taking science classes, so they are rarely cancelled.”
Folbe also said that College President Phil Hanlon’s focus on academic rigor might be better characterized as an encouragement for students to engage more with academics.
“I don’t know if ‘academic rigor’ is necessarily the right term,” she said. “I think it is more about being engaged in classes and being immersed in their learning.”
Cramer said faculty members from her department often discuss grading standards, but not “academic rigor,” as per Hanlon’s call to combat grade inflation in the “Moving Dartmouth Forward” policy initiative.
“In my department, the level of class can be very different from ‘psychology 1’ to a senior psychology seminar, and we have different expectations for each of these classes,” Cramer said. “We don’t necessarily use the word ‘rigor’ very often, but I think each of us tries to design our courses in a way that challenges our students.”
Both McPeek and Cramer pointed to increased involvement in extra-curricular activities as a possible cause for the shift in focus away from classes. McPeek said that while working as a part of the ad hoc committee, he learned that many students said they participate in at least 35-45 hours per week of extra-curricular activities.
“To me this seems a little excessive,” McPeek said. “It is like having a full-time job and going to Dartmouth on the side.”
Cramer cited recent data released by the College that reported students spend less time on courses now than they did in the past.
“I have been here more than 30 years, and there have always been individual students who were very busy, and it seems much more common now,” she said. “One reason could be that the students who come here have already lived lives that involved a lot of activity, so we wouldn’t expect them to stop doing these extra-curricular change.”
