English Department May Cut Title

For a department that emphasizes concise writing, the name “Department of English and American Language and Literature” might be considered a bit clunky.

As a result, the Faculty of Arts and Sciences will vote on whether to trim the name to the more manageable “Department of English” at its next meeting on April 8.

The proposal for the name change was passed yesterday by the Faculty Council, the 18-member governing body of the Faculty.

The department itself already uses the shorter name, with several endowed professorships carrying the name “Professor of English” and the department Web site using the title “Department of English.”

English professor Helen Vendler was less than enthused about the revision, calling it a “routine change.”

The Faculty also agreed to discuss a proposed lowering of the quorum—the threshold needed to pass motions—from one-sixth to one-eighth, at its meeting next Tuesday. The quorum proposal has been pending since it passed the Faculty Council nearly a month ago.

When the Council decided to send the quorum issue before the full Faculty, anthropology professor J. Lorand Matory ’82 expressed mixed feelings on the issue.

“On the one hand, a lot of legislative matters will be settled more easily and quickly,” he said. “But the problem that few of us participate has not been addressed. There’s the idea among professors that most matters that are voted upon have already been decided elsewhere.”

One issue still unsettled is whether the Faculty meeting scheduled for next Tuesday is in danger of being cancelled, as the January and March meetings were.

James H. Stock, the chairman of the economics department, admitted that the question of whether the vote on quorum would achieve a quorum was somewhat worrisome.

“Yes, there will be self-evident irony (and perhaps some red faces) if we have a meeting to discuss changing the quorum and fail to get a quorum,” he said in an e-mail last month. “But that would simply highlight the importance of making that change.”

—Staff writer Maxwell L. Child can be reached at mchild@fas.harvard.edu.