Seniors must satisfy new requirement

This article appeared in the joke issue. The College of Arts and Sciences Committee on Undergraduate Education voted yesterday to require all College seniors to fulfill a new quantitative requirement before graduation in May. The Committee was expected to add the new requirement to the 10 existing college requirements, although the move to extend the quantitative requirement to seniors came as a surprise. Since seniors are unable to take a full quantitative class by graduation, they will be required to complete 20 hours of sessions aimed at improving their mathematical and statistical analysis skills. Sessions will take place at various hours of the day and in some residences. College seniors are asked to see Director of Advising Services Diane Frey in the College Office to sign up for a session which suits their schedules. All other students will be required to take one of 40 existing classes -- which have been modified to fit the requirement -- in order to graduate. Senior Math, Statistics or Computer Science majors are exempt from the new rule, according to Committee of Undergraduate Education Chairperson and English Professor Rebecca Bushnell. "The Committee believed that these students had already demonstrated a working array of quantitative skills," Bushnell said. "These are not the students we are concerned about." Psychology Professor Paul Rozin -- who chaired a committee to examine the need for such a requirement two years ago -- explained the sudden addition of a senior requirement as a response to lower rates of successful job placement among graduating seniors. "The feeling was that over the past few years the rate of job placement, particularly in areas that require quantitative analysis -- such as business and research jobs -- has been declining steadily," Rozin said. "This year it has been especially low and companies like Microsoft and Goldman Sachs made fewer job offers to Penn students," he added. "It's just embarrassing." College junior Ari Silverman, chairperson of the Student Committee on Undergraduate Education, called the move premature, citing a lack of research on the new requirement and its similarity to many existing classes. "Students and faculty alike have only the vaguest idea as to what this requirement involves," Silverman said. "Many students already take classes like this, and to make seniors do this before they graduate in less than two months is absurd," he added. "I mean how would you like it if you already got accepted to graduate school and found out that you can't graduate?" Senior Class President Neil Sheth agreed. "Many seniors worked really hard to avoid our math and statistics requirements and now this," Sheth said. "What is the College going to do -- withhold all the diplomas?" But Bushnell said the move it necessary, calling the graduation of students without quantitative skills "unconscionable." "We certainly don't consider this an ideal situation," she said. "But desperate times call for desperate measures." College Dean Robert Rescorla said administrators are unsure how they will fund these sessions. According to Rescorla, the $2.2 million which was earmarked for the project has been "misplaced," although Provost Stanley Chodorow has been put in charge of locating the missing funds. Chodorow could not be reached for comment yesterday, since he is on a fundraising trip in Florida, according to his secretary Joan Paye. But a clerk at a Berkeley hotel said Chodorow checked out of the hotel yesterday with two female acquaintances. "Dr. Chodorow arrived Monday night with two blond women, wearing expensive jewelry," said the clerk --Ewho requested anonymity. "He checked out yesterday at 3, leaving behind a large room service bill."

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