Wednesday, March 12, 2008
University Senate’s Executive Committee did not approve the changes the Academic Policies and Procedures Committee recommended to the class drop policy at SenEx’s meeting last week.
SenEx agreed with the Academic Policies and Procedure Committee, the AP&P, that the mark “W’’ withdrawn, should be reinstated in place of the marks “WP,” withdrawn passing, and “WF,” withdrawn failing. But SenEx asked the AP&P to rewrite its recommendation regarding signatures of drop forms because of ambiguous wording.
Geraldo de Sousa, chairman of the AP&P and associate professor of English, said the committee wanted to be sure students knew they would have to follow the drop rules of the school of their major, not the school of the class they were enrolled in.
Jack Brown, a member of SenEx and professor of molecular biosciences, said he supported the reinstatement of “W” on transcripts, but did not agree with the AP&P that “W” was a neutral mark.
Brown said the University instituted the “WP” and “WF” grades because past studies done by the AP&P had shown that “W” was looked at negatively. He said people had assumed students withdrew from their classes because they were not doing well in them. The “WF” and “WP” grades were instated in Fall 2006.
Sousa said he did not think an occasional “W” on a student’s transcript would be a problem. He said the mark only became a problem when students habitually withdrew from classes.
Brown said the only argument that had persuaded him was the inconsistent standards teachers used to give “WFs.” He said it was unfair to the total population of students that some disciplines did not like to give out “WFs” but others did not mind using it. He also said the fact that some teachers gave “WFs” to students because they had not yet done any work in the class was unfair.
“If the student has never performed, then how do I know if they were failing?” Brown said.
If University Senate approves the AP&P’s current recommendations, students might be able to drop their classes online after the third week of the semester because schools at the University would be able to make their own signature rules.
SenEx also stated it was afraid some students would not understand the consequences of withdrawing from a class if they were not required to obtain a signature.
Kim McNeley, a member of the AP&P and assistant dean of College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, said students should get permission from an adviser to drop a class if they were a freshman or close to graduation.
SenEx was also concerned the new policy would be hard to implement because students who were taking the same class could have different drop rules.
Sousa said unless the school said otherwise, “W” was not a grade, but an administrative record. He said because teachers would no longer have to decide whether a student was passing or failing a class, the new system would actually be simpler.
Cindy Derritt, registrar at the Office of the University Registrar, said the new policy would be easy for the Registrar to implement. She said the Registrar could begin accepting drop slips without signatures immediately, but it would be at least 18 months before students could drop classes online after the third week of the semester because its programming staff was so backed up.
The AP&P will report its revised recommendations to SenEx after spring break. If SenEx approves the recommendations, they will be sent to full University Senate for approval before becoming policies.
— Edited by Patrick De Oliveira
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