As a Wellesley first-year and an English major, I selfishly want the Latin honors system to remain in place until I graduate. 

Humanities majors have historically received Latin distinctions more often than science majors, not to say there is a causal relationship between one’s major and academic rigor. Still, I acknowledge the underlying ways I may approach Latin honors from a position of privilege. As a result, I would likely benefit from the current system in a way that is disproportionate to a student of a different major or STEM degree as opposed to a humanities one. 

Recent conversations among faculty about altering the Latin honors system have cast doubt on its durability due precisely to this imbalance — the upward trend in award recipients may be corroding the distinction’s social weight, and disparities in awardee volume by department call into question the generalizability of Wellesley’s academic rigor.

Over the past several years, the number of students receiving Latin honors has increased significantly. This growth may be attributed to Wellesley’s removal of its grade deflation policy, which remained in place from 2004 until Fall 2019. The policy stated that classes should have an average grade no higher than a B+, encouraging teachers to keep a 4.0 GPA out of reach for most students. Logically, allowing only a select few to earn an A in each class led to a small, elite group being eligible for Latin honors, especially summa cum laude, which demands a GPA of 3.90 or above. In this period of grade deflation, the Latin honors system worked as intended: only the best and brightest Wellesley students (as measured by grades) obtained the highly coveted distinctions. It perpetuated an environment of academic elitism, and the minimal attainability of awards likely encouraged student competitiveness more than the current grading system, which allows more students to reach the pinnacle of Wellesley honors.

As more students achieved the elusive 3.60 or above GPA in the years following 2019, the social weight of Latin honors changed significantly due to their increased commonality. The elite associations with the distinctions are, of course, still pervasive at Wellesley, but less than they were a decade ago. This erosion of prestige defeats a large extent of the system’s purpose but does not fundamentally award individual students’ work either. Latin honors indicate how much students achieve compared to each other and as deemed by faculty. Thus, the honors dissemination reflects Wellesley’s institutional grading practices and students’ efforts. The two factors cannot be disentangled in any conceivable award system because a benchmark is necessary to identify those who excel beyond it. In this context, reinstating the esteem of Latin honors poses a simple path to remedying the current system: decreasing the volume of distinction recipients by making GPA award benchmarks higher, implementing a stricter grading policy, or any institutional alterations that lessen students’ impact on their distinction eligibility.

However, another problem presented by a return to recognizing only the very “best and brightest” is the lack of proper standardization for who fits the bill. Evidenced by the disparities in the number of honors recipients by major — specifically between STEM and humanities concentrations — not all disciplines are created equal. I do not mean that certain majors are definitively more challenging than others, only that numerous factors may contribute to this disparity in awardees: differences in teacher standards across disciplines, reconciling two grades in lab courses, in-class hours vs. outside-of-class work hours. Nonetheless, the imbalance between majors points to the existence of a variable academic experience among Wellesley students. Thus, a system based on the assumption that all fields are comparable only exacerbates the divide between disciplines. Taking into consideration the ethical problem of making institutional factors more prominent to preserve the system’s prestige, I believe the Latin honors system is indeed undurable.

To create a more equitable system, the current Latin honors framework should be reconsidered, considering both the varied academic experiences of students across disciplines and the increasing commonality of these honors. The growing prevalence of the distinctions, while fostering academic ambition, may also dilute the recognition of true excellence. Striking a balance between celebrating individual achievement and maintaining fairness across different fields of study is critical — an honors system should both preserve its prestige and ensure that the distinctions are meaningful, reflecting the rigor and dedication required in all areas of study. A replacement of the current system could allow for departmental determination of the benchmark for receiving honors, such as the required GPA. In doing so, distinctions would more accurately award students for academic excellence by taking into consideration the context of their major’s grade distribution. Ultimately, an ideal system would celebrate academic success without reinforcing disparities between disciplines, encouraging all students to thrive regardless of their chosen path.