This leads to the second point. He can understand how students can be happy with the current regime where there are relatively high grades, and with the proposed changes there will likely be even more pressure for departments to give slightly higher grades. Dean Rosenthal responded by saying that he did not want students to major in math if their only reason was that they could get honors. He'd be happy to have them go elsewhere if they did not really love math. Dean Sorum added that people may have been thinking about honors in the wrong way.
Honors is how well one does in school work.
That is all it is. It is not a statement about the person. This is simply what grades does a student get. Personal issues are irrelevant. For this reason the college-wide standard should be lower, at 3.0, to allow individual departments to honor the students they would like to honor.