In 1928 the faculty passed (44 to 27) a requirement that all juniors would be required to take an examination to be sure that they could write expository prose satisfactorily. A writing laboratory was also opened to help students who did poorly on the junior English exam. From 1928 until 1970, all juniors spent two hours on a Saturday in the winter writing a composition, with the testing being proctored and the tests graded by members of the English Department. In abolishing the examination in April 1970, the University Senate followed the recommendation of a committee that had studied the results of the exam for four years. The committee reported that the examination was “not a reliable measure of what it was purported to measure.”