Photo by Richard Howard

Lost-and-Found Art

Every April, when the Scream Tunnel has wrapped up for another year, there’s always detritus to be cleaned up along Rt. 135—from orange peels to lost-and-found items. In 2004, a small spectator at the 108th running of the Boston Marathon left behind a single white sandal, which made its way to Campus Police. When it went unclaimed for months, one of the longtime overnight dispatchers, Bill Burke, who had an artistic bent, took his paintbrush to it to commemorate that year’s marathon. The shoe has been part of the décor in the Campus Po dispatcher area ever since.

New Key Administrators

On July 1, Bethany Ellis became director of athletics and chair of the Department of Physical Education, Recreation, and Athletics. She comes from Boston University, where she was senior associate director of athletics for student athlete development. She received her B.A. in psychology from Yale and a master’s in education from Providence College. A week later, Jacquelina Marquez took over as Wellesley’s new dean of religious and spiritual life. She was previously associate university chaplain at Northwestern University. An ordained minister in the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), she also holds a master’s in pastoral counseling from Loyola University Chicago.

Grading Policy Repealed

After a yearlong discussion launched by Provost and Dean of the College Andrew Shennan at convocation last September, the faculty voted in May to repeal the College’s grading policy. Implemented in 2004, the policy legislated that the mean grade in courses at the 100 and 200 level with 10 or more students should be no higher than B+ (3.33). Just before the vote, Shennan—one of the creators of the policy—pointed out that an increasing portion of individual faculty and departments had already de facto abandoned the policy. He said that the policy had been intended to encourage students to focus on learning rather than GPAs. “For many of us,” he said, “a critical argument in favor of the policy was that widely discrepant grading patterns [gave] students misleading information about their performance. A more consistent grading standard would free students to worry less about which courses would boost their GPAs and to think more about exploring their intellectual passions.” But, Shennan added, “Fifteen years later, it is hard to see evidence of a decline in grade-consciousness.” Seventy-two percent of the faculty present at the May 5 Academic Council voted to repeal the policy.