This is an editorial opinion from the past Chair of the Faculty Senate and does not reflect the opinion of the Faculty Senate nor Western Carolina University.
Yesterday I introduced a resolution to the WCU Faculty Senate extending the option for students to select which classes if any to receive a Satisfactory/Unsatisfactory (S/U) grade this semester as opposed to a letter grade. S/U grades are not factored into the GPA, and this option allows students to progress in their career provided their programs do not require a minimum letter grade on a class to do so. The resolution was adopted, but not unanimously. The comments from opposing senators centered on their discomfort over making college less challenging given that we have already relaxed restrictions on caps on withdrawals and course repeats. Many of us, including yours truly, have eliminated course attendance requirements on our syllabi in anticipation of large numbers of students in isolation or quarantine from COVID-19. Some senators expressed alarm over chronic student disengagement with shockingly low student attendance in face-to-face and hybrid courses. One instructor also expressed distress over evidence of academic dishonesty with online tests being promptly posted by students on academic sharing sites such as Chegg. (Instructor pro tip: post your final exam on Chegg in advanced yourself, but with all the wrong answers. You are welcome.)
To my colleagues, I say just let your students have that satisfactory grade. This is the time for an understanding and supportive response. A recent conversation with my students about what they and their fellow students are experiencing this semester changed my mind on this issue, and I urge you seek those conversations. Could there be a more nuanced grade policy as the crisis continues? Sure. We can work on this next semester.
To the students who plan to abuse this opportunity, who will now plan to not study nor turn in that final project, who have chosen not to attend face-to-face or online class meetings, who view college courses merely as a boarding pass to be casually tossed once you get past the job market gatekeepers, I say a cruel reality will soon start dawning on you. First, not everybody who is reading this may survive the COVID-19 pandemic. Many who will may face lifelong health complications even if they are initially asymptomatic. Potential health issues include permanent loss of lung capacity, irreversible cardiovascular issues, liver and kidney damage, premature aging of the brain and even life-long erectile dysfunction (OK, can you please not go to that superspreader holiday party now?)
Beyond this and as a result of this and the death of a quarter million Americans with as many yet to come, we are going to start seeing the collapse of industries and institutions that have been the key to maintaining our way of life as the crisis prolongs even with vaccine prospects. You who were born at the turn of the 21st century will inherit a more precarious world than the one I received at my college graduation, and I am sorry that my generation has failed you so. I could lecture you on all of the issues that even predated the pandemic and been accelerated by it, but many of your peers are perfectly capable of giving you this lecture (do check their sources). I know this because I have talked to them. Many have told me that they are choosing not to have their own children because they do not expect to either afford having them, see it as unethical to bring children into this reality, or both. This should give you pause. It used to be that existentialism was contemplated in the safety of a freshman philosophy course, but now we are all living a Camus novel.
I am in the business of higher education because what I see in what I teach are the tools that you will need to rebuild your world perhaps into something better. Will you really make the choice of leaving those tools behind, take that boarding pass that will likely have you shipwrecked in a post-COVID world without these tools? You will start losing sleep, just like many of your professors, college staff and administrators are already losing sleep over the crisis that is upon us. Or would you make the choice of taking this college opportunity seriously for your own sake irrespective of grade concerns. Nobody can do your learning for you. Nobody can assess your learning better than you. You are one of a hundred human beings on this planet who were given this opportunity. The State of North Carolina supports your education in the hope that you will carve a path forward for our people. You could choose to graduate from WCU with the confidence in your new skills that you may improve the quality of your life and the lives of others, and with knowledge of the ethical imperative to become a creative problem solver and thus finding a life worth living.
Are we giving a break to some students who do not deserve one? Most likely yes. Right now, as I contemplate the future of this work, my mortality and health of my friends and family, my main concern is to support the students who get it and will make the right choice and get them through. At this point, this is the only card that we faculty have left.
Thank you for your resolution and your editorial, Enrique. Nine faculty members in my department, when surveyed, agreed with this resolution and offered the following comments: “Given the incredible amount of support for S/U among the students, I am in support of that option for this semester;” “I absolutely think the university should give students that option. Now more than ever seems like a time for understanding and forgiveness. Thank you;” “We should have done this much earlier; faculty were never surveyed as to their wishes.”
Let us all only hope the students might ever enjoy such a handicap (to wit, the ability to alter past performance) when they leave the artificial cocoon of academia and venture into the “real world”.
Let us all only hope that most of the faculty at WCU have enough empathy to recognize that we are in a pandemic that has, as of today, claimed 250K lives, and almost no one alive on the planet at the moment has ever experienced anything like it before. One of my students — an athlete — spent two weeks in the hospital with Covid. I know a staff member who just spent two days on oxygen because of it. I have students living in their cars, whose grandparents have died of Covid this semester, whose family members have dropped off children with them and then disappeared for 3 months.
I suppose that I could just call them snowflakes and tell them that they are living in an unreal cocoon, but why would I do that?
So I’m not sure how we got to this place, but my take is that educators should want our students to succeed — and we should trust their experiences and care about their challenges. Faculty senate is a place of thoughtful debate, as it was yesterday. As colleagues, we often disagree with each other, but we have a democratic process that allows for us to debate and vote. I’m sorry that this issue has inspired so much ire, and I’m not sure why it has. We voted to help students who are struggling this semester. We voted for an option, not a mandate. And I know that I voted as I did because I know my students, listen to their struggles, understand that their struggles are not mine but are just as are real and as worthy of my radical empathy.
Thanks, Enrique.
Thanks, Enrique. When conversation started, I was a “soft yes” on the S/U question. After hearing both sides of the discussion and the ensuing fallout, I have moved to an “enthusiastic yes.”
As a clinical therapist and social work professor, I want to reach out to faculty and let them know this is the time we CAN do something to help our students. Our job as teachers, mentors, and life coaches is to give students the best of ourselves to aid them in their journey to be productive citizens in our society.
It is vital that students feel that they have some choice and control over their lives. The anxiety of any WCU student should make us want to DO something to help them. We cannot do anything about the virus, but there are things as faculty that we can control. This helps decrease the anxiety of our students’ angst. The WCU resolution toward social action within our community helps support policies that protect and support vulnerable students during these times of uncertainty.
Grades right now aren’t necessarily a measure of skills or ability, but rather the socioeconomic and other privileges students have — or don’t. No one in our classes will get a worse grade than they had pre-pandemic. I believe students at WCU will be grateful for our conscious effort to consider their circumstances, most of which they have no control over as young people.
These days in 2020 are times that none of us could have anticipated and frankly, as faculty, we are glad we do not have to face as college students. This resolution confirms WCU’s commitment to all students, including first generation, regional, and transfer students. Let’s take advantage of our opportunity to truly empower our students, and give them the choice they deserve.
Thank you Faculty Senate for your resolution.
Thank you, Enrique. It is bewildering to me that some are describing a simple act of compassion for our students as “coddling.” Isn’t this the same Faculty Senate that determined that faculty members must be protected from the negative consequences of unfavorable student evaluations – based upon an understanding that these are extraordinary times? Should we also stop “coddling” faculty?
Thank you, Enrique, and thank you to the other commenters. I’m glad to see that I’m not alone in feeling this way.
Enrique, in the School of Teaching and Learning and the College of Education and Allied Professions we began this academic year with the phrase “Grace and Kindness” and you describe it well in your letter above. We strive to teach many things at Western and if we can teach “Grace and Kindness” I would mark it as a success. Have some students “played” on this kindness this semester? Most likely, by some measures. If sometime in the future they themselves exhibit “Grace and Kindness,” I will be proud.