No Cut Problem—in Utopia

ONE STUDENT boasts, "Under the no cut system at Dartmouth, I took 33 cuts last semester and was never nabbed." A second bemoans his fate, "I took only 12 and got a warning." A third complains timidly, "The no-cut system keeps a man in uncertainty and fear." A fourth, not to be identified with the first, affirms, "The no-cut system is very good, almost too good."

So ran quotations in a front-page story in The Dartmouth on January 26, just before final examinations when students suddenly develop an extraordinary interest in education. The editorial page came out with a blast against the vote of the Faculty Council to uphold the present "no-cut" system, which has been in effect since 1938. "This plan of coercion bodes no good for anyone," prophesies the gloomy undergraduate writer. "It has proved unworkable with existing machinery; and it is an impossible enforcement task however administered."

The vote of the Faculty Council was taken only after careful study of the 14-page analysis of the problem of regulating attendance published on December 1 by Dean Neidlinger. He expressed what most professors believe to be true: No cut system can possibly be devised which will please both faculty and undergraduate body. If professors were willing to cooperate with the administration, our present system would work as satisfactorily as any other and perhaps better. For the moment at least, a number of colleges thinks well enough of it to use it. Among them are Amherst, Bucknell, Franklin and Marshall, Haverford, Oberlin, Swarthmore, Wesleyan and, in modified form, Yale. Most educators find that any cut system has so many unsatisfactory aspects that they tinker with it or change it and hope that a new one means improvement. Usually it does not.

The Dartmouth faculty and administration were so unhappy about our cutallowance system in force before 1938 that it was scrapped. The objections against that system are as real today as they were then. It is based on unsound principles: students are tempted to cut classes to use up their allowances; students are not forced to differentiate between necessary and willful cutting; the jobs of recording and checking in the Administration Building are complicated and expensive.

After studying Dean Neidlinger's report nevertheless, the Academic Committee of the Undergraduate Council submitted on January 24, too late for appropriate action, a Memorandum to the Faculty Council favoring a simplified cut-allowance system. It would permit students after a semester with an average of 3.0 or better a maximum of 20 cuts in all courses. Offenders exceeding 20 cuts by midsemester would be warned that another cut would put no further cuts, the warning would still stand on their records. Freshmen should not be permitted more than 15 unexcused cuts, no matter how high their academic standing.

It is probable that the Faculty Council at future sessionsmay give considerable time to a discussion about a majorassumption of the Academic Committee of the Undergraduate Council. It is this:

We do not consider valid the position that a student has an obligation to other students and the professor; the number of classes in which discussion is employed is comparatively small—beyond that, we believe that the amount of willful cutting under our proposed system would not be sufficient to appreciatively lessen the value of these discussions.

A second major assumption is: . . . the faculty have shown by their negligence in enforcing the present system that they either do not believe in it or have not the time to give to its enforcement, or both.

An editorial in The Dartmouth with that emancipatory fervor for which it is occasionally noteworthy asks the faculty "to abandon its totalitarian methods" and recommends "the unlimited cut system consistent with the ideas of a liberal, liberal [sic] arts college."

The "no-cut" system may sound bad to a loving mother who can imagine that her son may come down with a cold and yet be forced to go out into sub-zero weather and catch pneumonia. Actually the no-cut system enslaves no one. A fundamental procedure is for the faculty to hold each student accountable for every absence. In practice, this is a threat of disciplinary action seldom taken until evidence of negligence is accumulated. The Committee on Administration does not discipline a freshman until he has more than 15 and an upperclassman more than 20 unexcused absences per semester. The Dean grants excuses to students going out of town to marriages and funerals of their immediate families, to students confined by illness, and to students engaging in official college activities outside Hanover. So there is plenty of cutting under this no-cut system.

This misnamed no-cut system has not worked as well as it should, but Dean Neidlinger and most informed members of the faculty are convinced that the major obstacles are not insurmountable. The first and most impor- tant is that some, perhaps many, members of the faculty do not believe that it is wise to try to coerce students to attend classes. Some professors arrogantly announce to their classes that they do not record absences and thus achieve a dubious sort of popularity. Others are too lazy or too slack to take attendance, report absences to the administration, and question and admonish students who cut too often. These two kinds of professors cause bad feeling and confusion and can hardly pride themselves on their perverse iconoclasm or their piddling inefficiency.

The second obstacle is that undergraduates have not understood the philosophy of education underlying the no-cut system or have flatly refused to accept it. It assumes that the classroom method of instruction is a cooperative venture and that each member should take part in recitations and discussions for mutual benefit.

The third, voiced over and over again by students, is that members of the administration have been unwilling to come out frankly and say whether a man may cut and, if so, how many times without penalty.

With President Dickey's avowed policy of hiring only the most brilliant and effective teachers and of building up the faculty to a point where eventually no comparable undergraduate college will be able to say honestly that it has a better one, undergraduate storms about cutting systems may sound like simmerings in a tea pot under a weak fire. In the meantime, students should try to do a little straight thinking about freedom and responsibility in classrooms. And so should some professors.