Wellesley College has been abuzz with talk of cross-registration at MIT as the semester begins. Unofficially, some students see this opportunity to take classes at another institution as a chance to boost their GPAs. “I posted in the Class of 2020 Facebook group that I was looking for a ‘reasonable’ humanities class at MIT. I mean, I wanted an easy A,” Natalie Stueck ’20 told The Wellesley News. Within 20 minutes of Stueck posting, dozens of Wellesley students were offering their suggestions in the comments.
“I was probably the fourth or fifth person to recommend Conversations,” Laura Brand ’18 said. Several students echoed her suggestion of this class.
The trend has been so widespread that the Wellesley College administration has taken note. “We’re losing students left and right to promises of easier grades, so I knew we had to do something,” Dean Karen Zimmer said.
With the specter of grade deflation looming, the administration has tried to be creative about ways to keep students on campus. To combat hundreds of students attempting to cross register for courses like “Conversations You Can’t Have on Campus,” Wellesley has attempted to add classes to its course browser that are similar to those offered at other institutions.
“We are pleased to announce that we are offering a variety of new classes to keep Wellesley students on campus. We especially expect ‘Conversations You Can’t Have on Wellesley’s Campus’ to be popular this semester,” Dean Joanne Brennan wrote in an email to the student body.
The Wellesley News has obtained a copy of the syllabus for this new course. Weekly seminars on topics you can’t talk about at Wellesley will include:
1. The legitimacy of the Ice Cream Endowment
2. Am I crazy, or does my radiator get slightly louder every day?
3. East side vs. West side
4. The moral implications of “Reply All”
5. Leaving dining hall dishes in the sink: game theory
Students will be expected to choose a side each week and debate the given topic.
