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Salient. Victoria University Student Newspaper. Vol. 38, No. 12. June 4 1975

The Mad May Mess ~ Up — Arts Faculty Meeting

The Mad May Mess ~ Up

Arts Faculty Meeting.

Drawing of a toliet roll with the words diploma on it

The Arts Faculty radically altered the academic lives of hundreds of students at its last meeting when it attempted to churn through 32 course regulation amendments for the 1976 Calendar.

Meetings of the Faculties of Arts, Languages and Literature are generally dull affairs with the order paper seldom containing more than three articles of interest and discussion only occasionally reaching any level of excitement.

However, during May departments suddenly realise that they have only a few weeks before course changes must be submitted if they are to apply for the following academic year. Consequently the faculties are bombarded with material.

The disturbing factor about this sudden rush of amendments is that courses are dropped or added, and departments are radically changed without consultation with students. The normal excuse:'but there was no time !'

This year course regulation amendments were made in the departments of Anthropology, Asian Studies, German, Russian, Classics, Information Science, Religious Studies, Education, History and Political Science. Most of these were small adjustments which had been discussed well in advance (such as the division of German 1 into a six-credit course of German language and one of German literature), but others (such as the reconstruction of the History department, and changes' in Anthropology) had either not been discussed in depth or certain staff members were pushing changes that they knew to be completely contrary to student opinion.

The Anthropology debacle concerned the rearrangement of ANTH 202 (Social Movements) into two courses, a general 200-level course on Social Change and a specific, more advanced 300-level course on Social Movements. These two courses would be held in alternate years. Unfortunately, the department did not realise the serious inconvenience for a student moving through the department during the alternate year. A student doing stage 2 Anthropology in 1977 would be able to do ANTH 212 and still be able to do ANTH 307 in 1978, while a student at stage 1 in 1977 would have to do the more specific course first.

This problem was pointed out at the faculty meeting and the Anthropology department was led away with its tail between its legs after being told to come up with a better proposal enabling the stage 2 course on Social Change to be taught every year.

The amendments to the History department courses concerned the changing of 200 and 300 level courses from 4 credits to 6, the modification of the major subject requirement from 36 to 42 credits, and the abolition of the stage 1 Modern History course. There was general agreement on the change from 4 to 6 credits and a resigned acceptance for the abolition of Modern History, but the raising of the major subject requirement from 36 to 42 credits seemed to signal something a little [unclear: leeeper].

Many departments have in the past used the breakdown of units to credits as a chance to increase the amount of work expected of students. The History department seems to be going about it in a more subtle way. Without assessing whether the 4 credit courses already ask too much of students, the departments feels obliged to substantially increase the workload because of the additional two credits. The Department warns: 'we will ask more from students in three ways: more general reading, more written work (a third essay in most courses) and more clearly defined preparation for tutorials and seminars', while at the same time it says 'to do justice to the field students must feel less pressed than they have with 4 credit courses'.

Student representatives challenged whether there was any need for a workload increase and generally disagreed that there was a need for an increase in credits for the major, but the amendments were all eventually carried and the 1976 Calendar received a few more entries.