At our Overflow meeting yesterday was a “Discussion on Whether to Consider a Resolution Supporting S/U Grading for Fall 2020”. I prefaced the discussion by providing:
1) At three prior points in time the general faculty and faculty leadership conveyed that there was not support for S/U:
- At the beginning of the Fall semester I sent an email asking the general faculty whether they supported S/U for fall; results revealed a plurality of faculty did not support S/U for Fall 2020.
- On September 14, the Provost and I discussed S/U and I conveyed I was not in support of S/U.
- On October 7, I brought the matter to the Faculty Senate Planning Team; a majority did not support S/U.
2) The extreme lateness of SGA’s request. I received an email from SGA dated November 3 asking if I would attend their Monday, November 9, 6-8pm EST meeting to listen to their concerns.
3) If Senators were truly concerned about offering an S/U option, then they would’ve drafted a resolution and passed it themselves at an earlier meeting.
Notwithstanding the above, as a show of good faith and fair dealing, I agreed to attend the SGA meeting. Confident that there was not overwhelming support from the general Faculty nor the Faculty Senate Planning Team, I told SGA I would bring the matter before the full Senate. I was wholly confident that the Senate would, also, not support S/U. After I presented the points above, the Senate voted to consider S/U (17-9-3).
Then, I was blindsided.
Following the vote to consider, I conveyed that the next step was for a Senator to draft a resolution and another meeting would be held to consider it. I stressed that the resolution should be well thought out, carefully crafted, and should reflect recognizable modifications from the Spring 2020 resolution (i.e., perhaps permit just one or two classes to be S/U; perhaps allow each College autonomy to determine what’s best for their courses, perhaps allow for Chancellor’s and Dean’s List, etc.). Literally, while I was speaking a Senator hastily posted a resolution into the chat box, which effectively stated “just use the old resolution from Spring 2020 and change the dates to Fall 2020”. This quickly gained support from other Senators. Based on the comment of one Senator, “because of time” the aim was to ram something through immediately. Was I to rule by decree? In disregard for the apparent, albeit confounding, will of the Senate? Even as they disregarded my urging for a deliberate, thoughtful, well-crafted resolution to be considered at a later date?
I did not. (I am a non-voting member whose job description is to facilitate the will of the Senate, even when I strenuously disagree.)
The resolution passed by a vote of 16-9-4.
What passed yesterday disregarded the position of the general faculty and the Faculty Senate Planning Team, my urgings as Chair, and was not thoughtful nor carefully considered. What passed yesterday was a shame. (1)
I am beyond disappointed.
Kadie Otto, Chair
———————————————
(1) No Enemies by Charles Mackay (English poet, 1814-1889)
YOU have no enemies, you say?
Alas! my friend, the boast is poor;
He who has mingled in the fray
Of duty, that the brave endure,
Must have made foes? If you have none,
Small is the work that you have done.
You’ve hit no traitor on the hip,
You’ve dashed no cup from perjured lip,
You’ve never turned the wrong to right,
You’ve been a coward in the fight.
I support your position.
Many of our students have been accommodated time after time throughout high school. These students must learn that there are consequences to the choices they have made this semester; and they must be held accountable for their actions. Giving students the option of taking an S/U in lieu of a D or F fails in this regard.
Now there some faculty and administrators who will argue that times are tough and we need to show compassion to our students. And I would respond that in the real world, students will often be faced with seemingly ‘over whelming’ obstacles that must be over come to finish an assignment or project that has been given to them. Their employer would expect them to ‘adapt’ and over come whatever difficulties they were facing, and “successfully” fulfill ALL of the project requirements on time – period! My point, the future employers of our graduates would accept nothing less and nor should we.
We must not forget that as educators one of our primary responsibilities is to ‘prepare’ our graduates for success in the real world of business, industry, commerce, etc. And by offering our students the option of a (S/U), I would argue that we will have missed the opportunity to teach our students a valuable ‘life lesson’.
If there was ever the time to make ‘accommodations,’ it is now. Teaching the ‘life lesson’ that people with power lack compassion can wait for another day.
Agreed. As I mentioned in Enrique’s post, we’re doing no favors by coddling here. The “new normal” happened ’round about July 2020. The world has moved on. We grow through adaptation and concomitant innovation, not the fantasy of being able to alter past performance. We’re continuing to inculcate incompentence toward that end. The students are laughing all the way to their impending two month “corona-cation” here. Don’t take my word on it. Talk to employers and see if they’ll extend this same kind of ex post facto reprieve.
It was extremely disheartening as a student to read this after also having been present at that meeting. Within SGA, we advocate for the students. We were told to wait on pushing pass/fail until other UNC schools pushed it. So we did so. We put out a student survey for one weekend which received over 1,000 responses in four days – if you do surveys for the university, you understand that that level response is rare. I shared those survey responses with Dr. Otto with the hope that the faculty senate would see the and understand the student’s perspective. The university has asked the students numerous times to have grace and patience for the professors as we all learn this modality. I’ve heard it said many times that the students needed grow up, and we did just that. We communicated what we needed and we did it respectfully.