Phil Faculty to Review Generals In Answer to Ph.D. Students' Plea

The Philosophy Department will reexamine its policy on generals in answer to a petition signed by 36 of the department's 52 graduate students.

Rogers G. Albritton, professor of Philosophy, said yesterday the Phil faculty would appoint a subcommittee to work with students and prepare a report for the department as a whole.

"The Department is taking this petition seriously. We are very willing to discuss 'prelims,'" he said.

The petition asks that 10 required courses be substituted for the exam -- taken in December of the second year.

"The exam puts a great deal of unnecessary pressure on us. We feel that it succeeds only in testing a certain kind of glibness and how much you can keep in your head at any one moment," Lawrence A. Blum, a tutor in Dunster House and a phil graduate student said yesterday.

Only Yale

If the petition's proposals are approved, students would have to pass the required courses and present a dissertation for a Ph.D. No written exam would be required. Only Yale's Philosophy department currently does not require a written exam from its graduate students.

Ph.D. requirements in the Philosophy Department were last reviewed two years ago when a number of changes were introduced.

Exam Switch

Under the system then adopted, students were no longer encouraged to try the exam in their first year, because first year students had accounted for most of the failures.

The Department also recommended a reading list for generals then. This was intended to take some of the pressure off generals, and to make it possible for students to try a more varied diet of courses.