Harpur College has eliminated the distributional requirement (see Page 1) of its bachelor’s degree program. In short, students will no longer be forced into taking three classes outside their fields of study if they don’t want to — and if they already have, they didn’t have to.

The Harpur College Council and the committee that presented the plan for removing the requirement reasoned that the General Education requirements for both Harpur and all of Binghamton University were enough to guarantee a broad liberal arts education.

They’re probably right. The extra classes were for most students little more than an annoying roadblock on the way to a satisfying course load. Sure, students at the SUNY system’s flagship campus need the well-rounded liberal arts education this place was founded upon, regardless of their major or intended profession. The General Education requirements are supposed to make sure of that.

We’re happy to see faculty and administrators taking a proactive approach to pruning unnecessary burdens on BU students. Perhaps a look at the drop deadline issue with that attitude could lead to renewed discussion, and a change that would be more palatable to Bearcats on both sides of the classroom.

In any case, the concern now is that students take too few classes outside of their intended course of study. Aside from the laboratory sciences, students can place out of almost all of the Gen Eds with good performance in high school or Advanced Placement credit. The University shouldn’t discourage academic achievement in high school students — to the contrary, we should seek out the best and brightest — but there should be a mechanism in place to ensure that even the most precocious of them have to take the same wide variety of classes as everyone else.

So the next step for the Harpur College Council and its appropriate committees may be to review and redefine what is required to place out of General Education classes, and perhaps make it harder to do so.

Our other worry — and this one isn’t as short-term — is that the elimination of mandatory liberal arts classes won’t stop with the distributional requirement. The last thing we want is to have to say is that we sat complacently by while our beloved college was transformed into the Binghamton Institute of Technology right under our noses. Harpur College faculty: always keep in mind, when dealing with students, your bosses each other, that we’re trusting every one of you to do whatever is within your power to protect the liberal arts legacy of Harpur College. We’d rather have to take three somewhat annoying classes from across the academic spectrum than not be able to take any at all.