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A SALUTARY INFLUENCE As the faculty grew in size and as curricular matters demanded more attention than in the past, its members began to entrust some of their business to regular standing committees, seven of which were included in the first catalogue list, published in 1911. In the following year, the tasks of admitting and dropping students were assigned to committees. Much to the relief of its members, President Hanson proposed in September 1923 that the faculty abandon the practice, begun in 1832, of meeting weekly, in favor of meeting on the first Thursday of every month during the academic year. Although there were many special meetings as the need arose, monthly sessions now became the rule. The transition from weekly to monthly meetings meant that the faculty would have to rely increasingly upon committees in conducting its business. The most important of these were curriculum (1922), which among other duties passed upon courses departments wished to add or drop; discipline (1915), which in conjunction with the student government relieved the full faculty of a task in which it had long spent far too much of its time; student organizations (1916), to which was assigned the responsibility of determining which campus groups should receive College recognition; and scholastic standing (1923), charged with evaluating the academic records of students, some of whom received counsel while others were dropped from College.139 Between 1904 and 1945 the faculty decided upon two major curricular changes and many minor ones. It defined and redefined both entrance and graduation requirements. It adopted many other academic rules, some of which remained in effect half a century later. It demonstrated a persistent concern for devising ways of preventing extracurricular activities from interfering with students' academic work. Needless to say, the ways it hit upon proved largely fruitless, which explains the persistence of the concern. Although as time passed it dealt with the cases of fewer and fewer individual students in its monthly meetings, the faculty still used these sessions to act upon the continuing flow of cheating cases, the petitions of 138Beginning with the establishment of the office of registrar in 1911 and for many years thereafter, the College registrar acted as secretary of the faculty. Anyone needing to use the original minutes or xerox copies thereof will be grateful for the fact that Clyde Stover, unlike some of his predecessors, had a very legible hand. 139The 1945 catalogue listed nineteen faculty committees, not all of which were of equal importance. The president appointed committee members for what amounted to indefinite terms. For example, between 1926 and 1945 the curriculum committee had but two chairmen. In April 1940 the faculty declared that the principle of rotation should apply here and urged the president to review committee membership at least every five years. 50