Changes Considered for Annual Prizes
By Tina Huang, Andrew Yuan and Valentina Zhang
The History Department’s Sherman Hoar and Blackmar Prizes, announced this week, were awarded with new criteria due to the coronavirus pandemic. Early Cum Laude Society inductees will also be announced soon, most likely by Nov. 1. This year’s inductees may be selected with new but unspecified criteria, according to Exeter Cum Laude Society President and Math Instructor Jeffrey Ibbotson.
Early Cum Laude induction is typically given based on grade-point average to graduating seniors in the top five percent of their class. In previous years, inductees were announced in early October. Ibbotson noted that, though a change has been proposed, it has not been voted on by the Cum Laude Committee. The Committee will meet for the first time today, and Ibbotson did not specify what the possible change would be.
“There has been summer work done on a proposal for changing the selection criteria for Cum Laude membership,” Ibbotson said. “The group will be voting on this soon, and I hope that we will have the membership decisions made sometime in the coming week.”
In previous years, the Sherman Hoar Prize was given to students who received two flat As and one A- in the U.S. History sequence. The Blackmar Prize was given to students who received three flat As. However, due to last spring’s Pass/Fail grading system, only fall and winter term grades were considered this year. This year, the Sherman Hoar was given to students who received one flat A and one A-; the Blackmar was given to students who received two flat As.
“The prize recipients are typically determined by asking the Dean’s Office or the Registrar for a spreadsheet of student names who met the graded criteria for each prize,” History Instructor Sally Komarek said.
Established in 1900, the Sherman Hoar Prize was named after Sherman Hoar, Class of 1878, who was a Congressman and United States District Attorney for Massachusetts. Hoar was the great-grandson of Roger Sherman, who co-drafted the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution.
The Blackmar Prize was established in memory of General Wilmont W. Blackmar, Class of 1864, the captain of the Union Army’s 15th Pennsylvania Cavalry. Blackmar fought in the famous battles of Antietam, Chattanooga and Chickamauga. The History Department remembered him as a Congressional Medal of Honor recipient and for being present when Robert E. Lee surrendered to Ulysses S. Grant in the Civil War.