The Decision of Our Semester

Monday's class was one of the more interesting and extraordinary experiences of my two years in Baruch. As a class we were given the authority to decide on the professor would handle our grades from the first test. What made this decision so difficult, was the fact that as a class of 60 students we had to make a unanimous decision. So the student who got the highest mark and the student that got the lowest mark had to agree on what the professor should do with this test. There are various decision making techniques that we could have used to make an unanimous decision.

Chaos was certainly an issue as the decision making process began in the class. Once someone took charge and began asking everyone of their opinions, there was order in the class. Personally, I believe without the pressure of having to make a unanimous decision affected everyones ability to make a decision. Many of the students gave up the best possible method to improve their grade in order to have one method that would help the entire class at the same time. This can be considered the compromise method and it worked very well to make a unanimous decision for the entire class.

The accommodation method is another method that could have easily worked well with our situation. The class saw everyones needs and made a decision in which other's needs were more important then their own needs. This can be very similar to the compromise method and I believe both would help if we were to make a future unanimous decision as a class.