Volume CXXXI, Number 24 May 3, 2002 f

Students seek grandfathered grade status
NICHOLAS J. LoVECCHIO
ORIENT STAFF

After the Faculty voted 45 to 29 last month to implement a plus/minus grading system, various groups of students, including Student Government, have waged campaigns to encourage the Faculty to reconsider the issue.

A week after the vote, a forum was held at which students brainstormed various paths to take. Some students wanted to focus on "grandfathering" enrolled students into the current grading system, while others wanted to have the Faculty reconsider the issue altogether.

Since then, a number of actions have been taken.

Students sign a petition urging a grandfathering of current students out of the recently approved plus/minus system. (Henry Coppola, Bowdoin Orient)

Student Government has sent letters to students urging them to talk to their professors, in addition to letters to the faculty members asking them to consider locking students into the grading system. The government has not, however, supported efforts calling for a reconsideration of the question of the plus/minus system as a whole.

Members of Student Government have also been trying to find a faculty sponsor who will agree to bring the issue up at Monday's faculty meeting, with the intention of adding to the already approved resolution an amendment that would lock students into their current grade status. They are still in the process of trying to find a faculty member to agree to do this.

In order for the issue to be reconsidered in any way, a faculty member would have to make a motion at the next meeting. Since it is not new business, said Student Congress member Jason Long '05, the Faculty would then have to vote on whether it wanted to discuss the issue again.

Long said that in order to be successful in finding a faculty sponsor and in convincing other members to reconsider the issue, new evidence must be produced. "We have new information," he said, referring to the statistic that 84 percent of student respondents to a poll said they wish to be locked into the current system. (Six hundred fifty-three students voted; only first years, sophomores, and juniors were eligible to vote.)

Citing that students are often thought to be apathetic in College affairs, Long said, "We wouldn't be so apathetic if our opinions were taken into account. We bear so little importance in general policy on campus."

Long said he plans to rally the Faculty again in the fall to re-consider the entire issue, even if nothing is accomplished at the meeting Monday.

"One message we want to send to professors is that we're not just apathetic consumers that will easily change on the whims of the faculty, in midstream," Long said.

Andrea Larkin '03 and Heather Honiss '03 started a petition, which during a two-day period gathered roughly 600 signatures. They presented the petition to President Barry Mills. Mills, who supports the move to the plus/minus system, said he has little power to cause a change in the Faculty's decision and urged the students to present the petition to professors.
According to Long, the Student Congress was asked to endorse the petition, but it declined to do so.

Another group of students, organized by Selena McMahan '05, has also taken action in hopes of having the Faculty revote on the plus/minus system as a whole. McMahan and others involved have spent the last week gathering student signatures on a large sheet of paper, which will be hung up at a number of possible locations: outside the Faculty meeting Monday, or anywhere students can see them.

"We haven't counted the number of signatures yet but there is an overwhelming majority against the plus/minus grading system," McMahan said.

McMahan said that she sees the issue as indicative of poor communication between students and faculty, and that in all her group's meetings it has been clear that current students do not want this change to affect them. She said, "It's clear that though Bowdoin student all have very different reasons for opposing plus/minus grades, very few students want them to be implemented next year the way that right now they are going to be."