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Volume CXXXI, Number 24 |
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Delaying tactics
There's a crucial vote next Monday, and Student Government wants you
to know about it. Professors and coaches are scheduled to vote on a motion
to exempt the current student body from a plus/minus grading system with
which the Faculty has already decided to saddle future classes. The coming
Faculty meeting has been met by a rare blitz of publicity and maneuvering
by Student Government, which thinks-rightly so-that students are unhappy
with the impending change.
Students found notices in their mailboxes this week that read, "Make
your voice heard. On May 6, the Faculty has the opportunity to grandfather
the existing student body from the new grading policy. This message brought
to you by: Student Government."
We're not used to such strong language (everything is relative) from
our student representatives, but the initiative is very welcome. There's
no doubt that the issue is front and center in most students' minds. It's
obviously a priority for our representatives too.
The strategically-minded student reps decided to avoid a fight over plus/minus itself next week; instead, they hope that the contract that current students have with Bowdoin is not tampered with unfairly. The faculty ought to respect student opinion on Monday and also go further by delaying the grading change to the fall of 2003. The incoming first-year class knowingly applied to a school that had kept its head about grading. Will the Faculty disappoint them-and us? -JMF
Committee needs to act objectively
With the recent addition of plus and minus grades and the
possibility of adding GPAs to transcripts, it is possible that, in the
span of one year, two of Bowdoin's long-held academic policies could be
overturned, and Bowdoin College could become a very different place as
a result.
However, the fact that the Faculty could essentially wipe
out several decades worth of academic policy is not surprising, since
many faculty members do not understand Bowdoin's academic tradition. Nor
are they likely to gain any insights into why the College currently prohibits
the calculation of GPA if their only source of information comes from
a memo that the Recording Committee recently sent to faculty members regarding
its recommendation to calculate GPA.
Nowhere in the memo did the Committee state that one of
the reasons that GPAs are not currently calculated is because the College
has historically de-emphasized grades, which is evidenced by the various
grading systems that the College has used, including one system in which
letter grades were not used at all. By not providing historical information,
faculty members are more likely to vote for measures that they think would
be good for any general college, instead of what would be good for Bowdoin.
What is perhaps even worse, though, is that the Recording
Committee neglected to mention any of the negative consequences that might
arise, such as an increased emphasis on grades, if the prohibition against
calculating and reporting GPAs was removed.
Even if this was a simple oversight on the part of the Committee,
the memo undoubtedly indicates a certain degree of bias on the Committee.
Because it is the Recording Committee that decides which grading policies
need revision, having such a bias can be a very dangerous thing, especially
when one considers that only about one half of the faculty members actually
attend faculty meetings and cast votes.
The bias of the Recording Committee combined with the absence of half of the Faculty at faculty meeting votes makes for a very questionable method of producing academic policy. It makes sense to have a group such as the Recording Committee bring up questions of academic policy, but the group should act in an objective way and should be respectful of Bowdoin's traditional policies. -BJL