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BY SUE CHEN

In print | April 22, 2004

At the honors open-house meeting in February, English professor and honors coordinator Craig Williamson explained the lure of honors.

The college’s 82-year-old program gives students the opportunity to participate in “intellectual dialogue of the highest order,” he told a gathering of about 50 sophomores.

That, at any rate, is the official reason to partake in the legendary honors program.

But not everyone is drawn to the program by the desire to seek intellectual dialogue. They are also influenced in part by the pressure surrounding the program.

In 1922, President Frank Aydelotte created a program at the college modeled after the tutorial system at Oxford University. Students would participate in seminars and engage in intellectual discussions. They are tested at the end of their senior year by external examiners, who determine the bestowment of honors, high honors or highest honors.

For many students, the opportunity to take seminars and face external examiners is indeed the reason for their decision to pursue honors.

“Honors exams, scary as they seem, are a good way to leave the place with a coherent sense of what you’ve done,” Sonia Vallabh ’06, who attended the meeting, said.

“I wanted the challenge,” honors biology major Jawaad Hussain ’05 said.

Admissions Counselor Brian Burnheter ‘01 remembered his external examinations as an honors political science major. "[It] was somewhat intimidating and frightening until I walked in the door … the mere fact that you’re sitting across the table from the person who wrote your textbook is kind of eerie at first."

“It’s not an experience you get anywhere else, at least at the undergraduate level,” Burnheter added.

Making the decision

"There's certainly no pressure not to do honors," Acting Chair of the English department Nora Johnson said. "We deal with students individually, but we do try to encourage people who can do honors to try it," she added.

When asked if there is pressure to do honors, biology professor Rachel Merz said, “I don’t think so, no.”

While many departments - and some students - agree with Johnson and Merz, others say there is no question that the pressure to do honors exists.

“I think there is pressure to do honors. When you’re looking at the school as a high school student, honors is presented as something special. So, of course, you want to be special,” Spanish major Maria-Elena Young ’04 said.

“A big thing is the parental pressure. Because of the name, [there’s] this pressure,” religion major Rasika Teredesai ’04 said.

Math major Brigid Brett-Esborn ‘04 said a lot of the pressure to do honors came from outside Swarthmore."To people outside, there’s the opinion, ‘Why would you not take this opportunity?’ though I haven’t felt that opinion from anyone inside the college," she said.

The admissions office said it did not present honors as something special, just different. “I think in general what the admissions office tries to do is make sure the audience knows [choosing honors] is about preference of learning style, not ability,” Burnheter said.

Admissions tour guide Katie Chamblee ‘07 agreed. "In training, [the admissions office] tells us to talk about honors as a different way of pursuing study than course. We’re not supposed to act as though one is better than the other. In fact, we’re supposed to tell people the name of the program is the ‘program of external examinations.’"

The lure of honorifics

The program is the only way one can graduate with honorifics, and this fact is not lost upon students when they contemplate whether to do honors.

Of the five or six questions asked during the honors information meeting, one was “Does honorifics go on your diploma?” Yes, Williamson replied, and if you fail your external examinations, it is as if you had never done honors, because you can still graduate. “You don’t have anything to lose,” he said.

Nothing, that is, except the honorific.

When the college eliminated honorific distinctions in course and revamped the honors program in 1996, the percentage of graduates in the honors program more than doubled - from 10.2 percent to 21.8 percent - the next year, according to the Office of Institutional Research.

Last year, 33.1 percent of the class of 2003 graduated with honors, according to the Swarthmore College Fact Book.

Because the college simultaneously ended departmental honorifics and changed the number of required honors seminars from six to four, it is unclear how much of the increase was caused by students wanting the honorifics and how much was due to the less demanding seminar requirements.

Still, those who are used to receiving honors feel some pressure to be part of the honors program.“I graduated cum laude [from high school], and you feel like you should continue,” honors art history major Alexandra Sastre ’05 said.

For this reason, some say “honors” is a misleading term for the program that focuses on depth instead of breadth.

“The name ‘honors’ — it shouldn’t be called that, because it implies a special honor. Some schools have honors colleges. That’s not what this is … people felt pressure to do it because of the name, because of [it being] honors,” Rachel Fichtenbaum ’04, an honors linguistics major, said.

Chamblee agreed. “I think the name ‘honors’ is kind of deceiving and does seem to suggest that the students in that program are somehow ‘better’ than those in course majors, whether or not that is actually the case,” she said.

Merz said some students wanted to do honors “because they just thought it was the hardest thing to do … [this] doesn’t show a great reason to do honors at any intellectual level.”

Some see the honorific as signaling better qualification. Rachel Winer ‘06, who was at the honors information session, said there was an “extra benefit on applications” to graduate school because honors has a good reputation, "so it’s an added boost."

“I’ve spoken with people who dropped honors as soon as they got into med school,” Young said.

But dropout rate within the honors program has remained relatively low. Over the last five years, an average of five students out of 120 drop out, according to Williamson.

Fichtenbaum said there was little difference between the honors and course majors in linguistics. She takes the same classes as course majors and only has to write two extra research papers and face the external examiners to fulfill her honors requirements.

"I feel like linguistics brings out the stupid part of honors. The only different thing for [honors linguistics] is two research papers," Fichtenbaum said. And just because you're facing external examiners, "you're not any more honorable," she added.

But Williamson said students earned the honorifics by doing work of such a quality that it could stand testing by outside examiners, not just Swarthmore’s own faculty. Moreover, he added, it is the only means worthy of a graduation honor.

“The faculty, by creating the program, made a statement that the honors program is the most demanding and most fulfilling method of study during the last two years” at Swarthmore, Williamson said.

And, as such, only those capable of doing “honors quality” work will be accepted into the program, according to the College Bulletin.

“I may try to discourage students who I think might have marginal academic performance” from doing honors, political science professor Carol Nackenoff said.

Because there is a higher GPA requirement for acceptance into honors than course, “there’s the assumption that honors [students] are better students,” Alex Brennan ’04 said.

In fact, the assumption is not without foundation. “I think most, but not all, of the best students are in the program,” Williamson said. As to why some of the best students are not doing honors, Williamson said reasons varied and pointed to logistical problems that come with studying abroad, double majors and special majors.

The perceived intellectual superiority of the program and seminar preferences for honors students deepen the division between course and honors.

"At one point, people in course were looked on as second-rate citizens. We didn't like that, so we opened up seminars" to course majors, economics professor Larry Westphal said.

Even so, some course students still feel inferior for not pursuing the opportunity of the honors experience. “That’s a really hard decision for me not do it, because I felt like I was a slacker for not doing it. Choosing not to do it is like choosing an easier route,” biology major Kate Penrose ’04 said.

“I feel like I’m slightly deficient” for not doing honors, Young said. “That’s how ingrained it is in me.”

Getting into ‘good seminars’

When the college eliminated honorifics in course and cut the mandatory number of seminars from six to four in 1996, departments across the board experienced a surge in honors enrollment.

Some departments have seen a rise more than others. Before the policy was implemented, the political science department was experiencing a drop in the number of honors majors and hoped the change would encourage one-third of its students to do honors.

In fact, “not only did people come into [political science], half of the majors apply to honors, if not more,” Nackenoff, who chaired the department from 1997 to 2003, said. “It’s put unmanageable pressure on seminars, especially if someone is going on leave.”

Political science is not the only department feeling the crunch. Economics seminars are “full to almost overflowing,” department chair Mark Kuperberg said.

Some find honors attractive precisely because it gives them priority in scheduling.

“It’s the only way to get into the good seminars,” honors English major Julia Pompetti ’05 said.

Johnson said the English department had not had to turn anyone away from seminars, but that, while course majors are “welcome … [they] don’t have as high a priority.”

But for a program that seeks to encourage independent learning and intellectual dialogue circumventing registration rules strikes Fichtenbaum as the wrong reason to do honors.

“They’re not actually choosing the system, they’re just choosing the means of getting into classes,” she said.

Williamson disagreed.“I don’t think you can separate the desire to study in small group situations with the desire to do honors,” Williamson said.

Additional reporting by Christina Temes

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