Fewer A’s Shouldn’t Mean Fewer Friends

Grade deflation is here — a toxic Harvard need not be.

In the wake of Harvard’s new cap on A’s, many students have expressed concern that the policy will cause a collapse of academic collaboration among students. Nightmares include study sessions where premeds feed each other wrong problem set answers, seminars filled with protracted discussion meant to filibuster time, and disingenuous reports of group project efforts (as if those don’t already exist).

However, even if some students adopt competitive attitudes, the need to collaborate will remain. In many courses, the problem sets are designed to be so difficult that it is near impossible to tackle them alone. Instruction outside of lecture in such classes consists of peer-to-peer collaboration — “helprooms” or “math question centers” for problem sets often involve instructors coaching a few students at once about a problem and then turning them loose for the rest of the assignment.

Hence, students who may feel they have a perverse incentive to avoid collaboration are still made to interact. Experts in negotiation offer great lessons in how to navigate the resulting tense situations. Specifically, students have the power to shape grade deflation culture — a power we must use for the sake of kindness and collaboration.

I am currently taking professor Daniel L. Shapiro’s General Education course “Negotiation and Conflict Management: From the Interpersonal to the International.” This class covers the crucial importance of “framing” in negotiations: the way parties view one another. In Shapiro’s book “Beyond Reason,” he argues that effectively framing person-to-person connections as collaborative ensures both sides are able to walk away with a mutually satisfying outcome; in this view, even in situations with competing aims, taking active steps towards a friendly environment will yield strong results.

The more we treat those around us as allies rather than adversaries, the more productive collaboration becomes. Fostering affiliation or “connectedness” is key.

Working on a problem set is not exactly the same as negotiating, but under the grade cap, students will have to negotiate implicit norms on the balance between individually pursuing A’s and collaborating for greater attainment of educational value. When placed in such a situation, fostering connectedness could help break down the barriers that lead to mistaken fears of collaboration.

For example, in a practice I have observed many students do already, one can frame a problem not as points to be gained but as a challenge to be solved together. When working together, students will often say “what is the problem trying to say,” or “what is wrong with this problem?” These kinds of subtle verbal cues that make the problem into the common enemy create a difference, and those fearing a decline in collaboration would be well served to begin intentionally using them.

But affiliation-building doesn’t have to be limited to the classroom. Building personal connections with classmates outside of an academic setting also serves to build the camaraderie that facilitates effective collaboration.

With this, I’m calling for students to play a more active role in building relationships with one another. Grab lunch with your problem set buddy, go on a coffee run with your discussion partner.

In all of this, we must realize that we as individuals have the agency to choose how to respond to our new environment and what behavior we will deem acceptable from others. If we let this policy reframe our conceptions of each other as enemies, the more that tension will build on itself and actually manifest into our broader social reality.

There will be those who allow their perfectionism to ravage their relationships with their classmates and themselves. All of us, though, ought to know that this is not a desirable outcome.

At the end of the day, it’s simple: If toxic competition is something nobody wants, why are we all so concerned that it’s going to happen? Instead of focusing our energy on worrying, let’s redirect it towards building up each other. It is us who get to shape that future. Let’s act like it.

Emily X. Yu ’29, a Crimson Editorial editor, is a Chemistry concentrator in Currier House.