By KERI ANNE FOX
Associate Online Editor
 

This month the EPC hopes to finalize approval of their proposal and reach the implementation stage. On September 22 there will be a "discussion of proposals about social and behavioral requirement, multicultural courses, and the study of foreign languages," said the Associate Dean of Faculty Ann Scott.

On September 29, the faculty's day of reckoning, there will be a "discussion of various policies governing general education (e.g., transfer credit, "double dipping") and a vote on each of the proposals already discussed," Scott continued.

Finally, on October 6 there will be "a vote to retire certain current degree requirements with the Class of 2001 and implement the proposals adopted by the faculty for the Class of 2002," she finished.

This meeting dealt with two planks of the proposal: The quantitative and visual and performing arts requirements.

Discussion began when Professor of Philosophy Mark Okrent brought up the point that without an oversight committee, the qualifications of the quantitative requirement would be so, "broadly construed that anything [could] fit."

"By leaving it up to the individual departments. ... [there is] so much room for interpretation so as to potentially distort the purpose of the requirement," he continued.

Offering a counter point with the question, "Perhaps we should ask what wouldn't fit," was Professor of Physics Mark Semon.

The point of the quantitative requirement is that it has math "as its central focus. ... And it seems to me that's the key thing that avoids the erosion of the requirement," stated Associate Professor of Mathematics John Rhodes.

Surprisingly enough, the debate on the quantitative requirement ended by 4:15. The result of the debate will happen with final vote on the proposal as a whole. A vote many are waiting, patiently and not so patiently, for.

Discussion on the visual and performing arts plank, as it originally was, never actually happened. What took its place was a proposal of sorts presented by Assistant Professor of Art Erica Rand on the behalf of herself and seven other faculty members who work in the visual and performing arts.

They asked that this requirement be eliminated from the general education for three reasons which they presented vocally and in their concerted statement: lack of staffing, "a disinclination to legislate or mandate the study of the arts," and "a general concern with the number of proposed requirements."

Rand suggested that her group's perspective comes from being a part of the visual and performing arts: "If you haven't taken art since went to college, you may not know what the visual arts are today."

Although the meeting ended at 6 p.m. The debate continues as faculty hash out their differences on the need, viability and importance of the proposed requirements.