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SERVING THE CAUSE reduction in the distribution requirements. One evident place to begin was with the unified course for freshmen, and with general education. C.C, Lit. Found., and English Composition were eliminated as requirements (they continued as electives), and the Bible requirement was reduced from two courses to one.160 In the spring of 1968 the faculty created a general education committee and charged it with developing and administering elective courses offered under that rubric.161 The faculty spent part of the 1968-1969 year in preparing the courses which would be offered when the new calendar and curriculum went into effect in the fall of 1969. Although much attention was riveted on the proposed January term offerings, the departments were responsible for developing first new fall and spring term courses, each of which would occupy one-fourth of the time of a conscientious full-time student. As far as the committee which proposed it was concerned, the new system was based on four closely related, but often misunderstood, assumptions. First, all of the new courses would be devised in an effort to encourage, even require, students to assume a greater responsibility for their own learning than in the past. Second, what took place during the January term was expected in every case to have the academic content necessary for it to qualify as one of the thirty-six courses a student took. Third, during each January term there would be a variety of academic experiences, some similar to and others different from fall and spring term courses. Fourth, while the faculty classroom teaching load was decreased under 4-1-4, this was intended to effect a rearrangement of the way in which a faculty member used his or her working time and certainly not a decrease in the number of hours which it consumed. Less time spent in class would probably leogy 1967-1968 much of the faculty enthusiasm which had long carried the required general education courses was missing. This was especially true of the C.C. course. Some younger faculty who were determined to advance their professional careers, at a time when colleges were increasing their emphasis on scholarly activity, were reluctant to spend their time teaching a nondepartmental, general education course for freshmen. Strangely enough for a liberal arts college, a few faculty argued that virtually no one was prepared to teach the C.C. course. Many faculty who remained convinced that the two general education courses were fully justified as requirements had to weigh that conviction against one which held that the best interests of the College in the late 1960s required a reduction in the number of different courses a student was taking at one time as well as in the number of required courses. By now the pendulum, at Gettysburg and elsewhere, had swung away from the notion that there should be a core curriculum to the notion that no course should be required of all students. Under the new curriculum none, not even the religion course, was. The only possible exception was the course in health and physical education, which was not listed as a distribution requirement. 161Beginning with the 1976 catalogue, courses previously listed under general education were called interdisciplinary courses. 87