[comm_it]

This is true. Additionally, however, at my university I was told by the department admissions head that it isn't a requirement because it limits your set of applicants. The university is interested in people who haven't had the exposure to programming, but are keen and interested. A fair amount of my friends in first year weren't very well versed in programming, but found discrete mathematics very enjoyable.

Let's not forget that programming ability isn't the end goal of a computer science degree.