The general education requirements at La Verne are going through some drastic changes.

Starting in fall 2008 incoming freshmen will be required to follow a new general education program while current students will be given the option to continue with the original program or begin the new one.

New general education program? Sounds a little intimidating.

Well, for those future University of La Verne students, these changes are great improvement, but for everyone else, it’s too little too late.

As students know, the University of La Verne has a rather large general education program that requires students to take several Core classes in addition to basic general education classes.

The new relaxed GE requirements will allow more students to graduate on time – in four years.

We understand that the University holds very strong values that we should all embrace and carry with us throughout life. But come on, who really needs to take a class called “Values and Critical Thinking.” After all, every one of us did graduate high school and had enough common sense to be accepted into college right?

The five required Core classes teach important life-long lessons, but there are things that we deal with daily in this crazy thing called life that cannot be taught in a classroom.

There is no need to have individual classes that focus on “The Human Condition” or “Working Towards a Sustainable Planet.” These concepts are life lessons, not something we should be given a grade on.

An accrediting agency that came to La Verne expressed their disapproval for our abnormally large general education program. The agency also disliked the fact that the main campus students and satellite campus students have two different general education requirements.

Only after this response, the University decided to make some dramatic changes.

A panel of faculty members was created to handle the situation and together decided to rewrite the entire general education requirements.

The requirements were then divided into three different sections: Breadth Requirements, University Values and Interdisciplinary Requirements.

The Breadth Requirements dropped the social science requirements from three courses to two courses and included history, art history and foreign language in the humanities section. The panel said that foreign language requirements are still being discussed.

The panel also decided to “embed” the values taught in core courses into the traditional general education classes, relieving incoming freshmen from the ever so dull Core requirements.

For those of you interested in attending La Verne in the future or underclassmen returning in the fall: Congratulations! You now have the freedom to take a few electives just for fun.

For the rest of us who are currently a part of the original general education program, hang in there, graduation is almost here.