Sam Charap '02 said that many faculty members expressed dissatisfaction with the current system, which awarded 40 percent of graduating seniors with magna cum laude honors last year, according to Adam Lessler '01.
"It seems like the current system lumps a lot of people into magna [cum laude]," Lessler said. "In any system where you link some things and you don't link other things, you have this lumping where you're lumping certain students together."
Charap pointed out "inequities in the old system" which included each department having different standards for awarding high distinction on thesis work. The system in place, he said, seeks to use grade point average (GPA) to reflect general work instead of the work in each department individually. Also, when Latin honors was tied only to independent work-writing a thesis-many students may have done a thesis only to be eligible for Latin honors, overburdening the faculty.
Steve Vladeck '01 suggested that the problem with the current system is related to grade inflation.
"Amherst as a school is wonderful at trying to cure the symptom, but how much of this is linked to grade inflation?" he said. "Changing the honors policy will not change that at all. If magna is so tied to GPAs, and if GPAs are so high because of grade inflation, it seems that that's a problem with the College's grading system, not the College's honors system."
Mike Flood '03 said that he thought students writing theses should not receive the same honors as students who do not write theses.
"We live in a context here-we live in the world of schools like Amherst and Williams and Wesleyan and Harvard where you're applying to professional schools and graduate schools," said Professor of Anthropology Miriam Goheen. "We can say we're really going to crack down on grades, but then you go to apply to professional or graduate school, and your grades aren't going to be as high ... This is a national problem, mostly of the elite schools."
Charap suggested the option of ranking students within a class as a solution to the abundance of high GPAs .
Vladeck pointed out, however, that certain departments might have harder standards than others, making it harder for some students to achieve a high rank in those departments.
Elana Bernstein '03 said she was opposed to ranking within a class because because it puts students "in competition with [their] classmates."
"The noncompetitive nature of Amherst is something I really like," she added.
SGO Vice President Michelle Oliveros-Larsen '02 agreed. "We came to Amherst to stimulate each other, not to compete with each other," she said.
Vanessa Champion '01 said she approved of the current system because it "cuts down on the people writing theses just because it's tied to Latin honors." She suggested that if the system reverted to its previous form, "there'd be a resurgence of people just going through the motions. I think one of the good things about Amherst is that there's the option to do it or not to do it."
Dan Cooper '01 said he felt there "needs to be some sort of recognition that if you do independent work you get some sort of acknowledgement of that."
Demma Rodriguez '03 said she thought very few Amherst students would write a thesis simply because it might qualify them for Latin honors.
"I don't think anyone rolls out of bed and decides, 'I'm going to write a thesis,'" she said. "If it's easy to write a thesis just to get Latin honors, that's the underlying problem: if by the time you're a senior at Amherst you're so impressionable that you're going to undergo the process of writing a thesis just to get Latin honors."
Charap pointed out, however, that when the honors system was changed so that it no longer required that theses be written, "A lot of people did drop theses."
Vladeck noted that if theses were required for Latin honors it might "place an excessive pressure on the faculty."
Leif Bohman '01 added that too many thesis writers "tie up the faculty."
"It takes away from the time they have for office hours and time to prepare for their lectures," he added.
Rodriguez countered his argument, saying, "That's what they're there for."
Charap said he was not opposed to students' decisions to write theses in order to achieve Latin honors. "That's what grades are for," he said. "I see a person who does it for the wrong reasons and ends up doing it for the right reasons ... It's required at a lot of schools ... I am wholly in favor of going back to the old system. It'll probably overall improve the intellectual experience Amherst students have."
Vladeck agreed with Charap that it's "not so bad to say that we encourage people to write theses."
Bernstein said she thought that if "somebody's going to write a thesis during their senior year, honors should be indicative of the amount of work they're going to do independently."
Lessler said he thought that as long as "a thesis reflects four years of work" and not "just a semester of thesis work, it's fine."
Jesse Freedman '03 pointed out that many students might be working so hard to maintain high GPAs that they cannot afford to write theses at the same time.
"For a school that places such emphasis on getting such a wide range of education ... it's kind of unfair just to link any kind of honors with the thesis," Caetlin Ofiesh '01 said.
SGO Corresponding Secretary Amy Summerville '02 said she thought "the bifurcated system would be the way to go."
"There are a lot of people here motivated by the carrot dangling in front of them," Summerville said, also pointing out that some departments turn students away who want to write theses because of the volume of students within the departments and the burden too many theses would place on faculty. "Somebody shouldn't be penalized because they're a psych major, or because there aren't enough faculty to go around."
J. Ashley Ebersole '01 suggested that, "There is some value of going through four years at Amherst and getting a 3.8 or a 3.6 [GPA], and just because you didn't write a thesis doesn't mean that you didn't get a lot out of it." He also pointed out that "a lot of independent work is done in classes," and that double majors in particular might have trouble satisfying nine credits for each major while still maintaining "any other kind of breadth of course work" and also writing a thesis.
Champion agreed. "It's very hard to take classes outside of your major," she said. "There's very little time to do independent work outside of it. It's restricting in to saying you can't get honors unless you write a thesis. It might discourage someone from double majoring."
Rodriguez said she thinks "grades don't measure anything" except such characteristics as "how good a test taker you are."
"A thesis reflects more the type of student you've become over four years than GPA," she added.
Zeeya Jamal '02 pointed out that, "It's really hard for those people [in the sciences] to compete with humanities majors in terms of grades."
"There's more inflation with humanities majors than with the sciences," said Jamal. "Averages with science majors are Bs, B-minuses. I think there are a lot of differences when you try to compare across quantitative and qualitative departments."
Vladeck pointed out that the College might be more justified in comparing GPAs across departments if it required a core curriculum or had distribution requirements. "But people can graduate with 20 music classes," he said. "College honors cannot be linked to GPAs because they're too subjective-on the department, the type of work, and whether you're taking seminars or guts. It's a byproduct of our curriculum, but it's one we're going to have to live with."
Goheen suggested that "your degree from Amherst gets devalued with all this nitpicking about honors."
Jake Kaufman '02 agreed that "too many awards would devalue it."