Faculty Votes Cut In Language Rule

The Faculty disposed of two long-debated issues yesterday, chopping the language requirement from two years to one and establishing a new department of Visual and Environmental Studies.

The reduction of the language requirement, approved in February by the Committee on Educational Policy, eventually passed on a voice vote.

A few minutes earlier the Faculty voted down by about a three-to-one margin an amendment by Clifford C. Lamberg-Karlovsky, assistant professor of Anthropology. The amendment would have retained the two-year requirement, while following the CEP's recommendation that the students who have not satisfied the requirement when they enter would have to take a language course during their freshman year.

"I felt rather strongly that this is the worst kind of compromise," Lamberg-Karlovsky said last night. "I don't see that a one-year language exposure rule has any educational value. Even abolishing the requirement completely would have been better than this."

Dean Ford presented the motion, and it was supported by members of both the Germanic and Romance Language departments. The arguments were all ones that had surfaced during the CEP's two-month debate on the language requirement: that one extra year does little good for the student who does not take to language study the first year; that there are enough students voluntarily taking language courses so that the change won't badly deplete enrollment; and that by centering the requirement in the freshman year, students will be encouraged to build on high school language training.

Ford commented after the meeting that the support of the large language departments was probably decisive in winning Faculty approval of the reduction, which will go into effect next fall and apply retroactively to students who would have needed a second year of language study under the old rule to pass the requirement.

Requirements Not Specified

The new department of Visual and Environmental Studies also will begin next fall, though details of its course offerings and concentration requirements were not specified in the motion approved yesterday. The new department will supplement the present department of Architectural Sciences and will incorporate the Visual Studies now offered by the Committee of the Practice of Visual Arts.

"We've been working on this one for about five years," Ford said last night. The new department was approved last month by the CEP, and many likely details of its structure were outlined in a massive HPC audit of the Arch Sci department this fall.

John P. Elder, Dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, reported to the Faculty on his letter guaranteeing readmission to entering students "whose education may be interrupted in consequence of the Selective Service regulations." Elder explained last Friday that this guarantee applies to students who choose to go to prison instead of accepting the draft.

Elder did not ask for a vote of confirmation, but no one offered any objection to the policy he announced