Colleges are grappling with competing student demands to change grading during the coronavirus outbreak. Some want pass/fail for all to ensure equity while others want letter grades to boost GPAs.
to disparate circumstances. Some students and faculty believe that normal grading practices during these times are deeply unfair to those struggling with housing, food, health, family duties, a safe study space, access to the internet or classes several time zones away.
UC Berkeley, Stanford, Columbia, Barnard, Dartmouth, Smith and MIT are among the schools that have adopted variations of mandatory pass/fail grading for the spring term. Some, such as Berkeley, allow students to request letter grades if desired but don’t encourage it, while Columbia, Stanford and Dartmouth bar that option to maintain strict equity.
At the University of California’s nine undergraduate campuses, faculty leaders are adopting their own respective policies — most of them allowing students to choose pass/fail grading for more courses during spring term than is normally allowed. But even at Berkeley, policies differ. Berkeley Law School has moved to a credit/no credit system for all students. Unlike the undergraduate campus, the law school is not giving grades at all because doing so would defeat the purpose — to lessen stress — of the change, said law school Dean Erwin Chemerinsky.
At one point, council member Lily Shaw, who initially pushed for mandatory pass/fail without a letter grade option, got teary-eyed as she urged her colleagues to “support each other over our GPAs.” Another student leader, Naomi Riley, grew frustrated at what she saw as insensitivity to marginalized students.“It’s incredibly disappointing,” she said. “I definitely want to caution people from calling yourselves allies at this moment.
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