By Lexey Burns, Editor in Chief
The COVID-19 pandemic has forced students to adapt to an entirely new style of learning for the 2020/2021 school year, resulting in some students’ grades to suffer.
In the spring, Laurentian’s senate permitted students to opt for a pass/fail grade. Rather than receiving a letter grade on their transcript, students who decided to opt into the pass/fail would receive an S instead.
Malek Abou-Rabia, SGA Vice President of Education, presented the option of pass/fail grading to Senate for the 2020 Fall, 2020-2021 Fall/Winter, and 2021 Winter semesters.
Eric Chappell, President of the SGA, said in an email to students, “[w]e understand that students have experienced added barriers due to the emergency delivery Covid-19 has brought and strongly believe that these unanticipated circumstances should not negatively impact students’ overall GPA.”
Several senate members encouraged students, who would use and benefit from the pass/fail grading option, to speak in a hope to persuade other senate members to vote in favour of the motion.
Tara Baird is a second-year Equity, Diversity and Human Rights student. In the Senate meeting, she expressed the trouble of homeschooling her two children, working a part-time job, and keeping on top of her schoolwork, all while suffering from severe anxiety.
“I am typically a 9.0 GPA student and this semester I am so far behind in my work it’s unreal,” Baird said. “I know my GPA is going to take a hit this semester.”
Morgan Cashmore-Rouleau is a third-year psychology and women and gender studies student who said the pass/fail motion would help her grades immensely.
“I am a mature student and a mom, and COVID-19 has created additional barriers,” Cashmore-Rouleau said.
She added that due to the pandemic, daycare institutions are taking extreme precautions and not allowing children to attend if they “have a sniffle.” She is then forced to miss class to take care of her son.
“He’s done the COVID-19 test just so that I can be able to attend class and participate regularly,” she said.
Marie Josee Berger, Vice President of Academics, also supported the pass/fail option. She said “students… need that kind of empathy, they need that kind of compassion.”
“I think it is quite important in this difficult situation that our students are going through, and sometimes… when I speak to students, you can see how distressed they are, some of them are being able to cope very nicely, some of them are struggling.”
“I think it’s important that they are asking us to have simply the choice of fail and pass that we respond to them,” Berger said.
Some senate members were not in favour of the motion.
Cynthia Whissel, a professor in the psychology department, said “this is not the time to jump up and say ‘oh we should be compassionate!’ This is not an emergency, the emergency was last winter.”
Whissel said she would vote against the motion. She explained that she was already gracious with giving her students extra help and due date extensions whenever asked, adding that she believed students should be responsible for their own work and should not need the pass/fail grading.
“In this case, every student who entered a course entered a contract which they were well aware of at the beginning of the course. I feel that it is unfair to change the contract now because it is unfair to students who have lived up to the contract as well as not being strictly fair to those who don’t,” Whissel said.
Whissel also brought up potential repercussions of choosing the pass/fail grading.
“I would like to warn students who want to take an S, that graduate schools will look at your S and see a 52. I could almost guarantee it that people on admission committees will not see an A and they will not see a B. They will see a low D when you take that grade, so you are not doing yourself any actual favours.”
The motion passed with 31 votes for, 7 against, and 1 abstention.
Abou-Rabia said, “we are glad students will have more pathways to choose from when reviewing their grades after the semester, more work needs to be done on our end to communicate the benefits and consequences of these options.”
“This is a big win for the SGA and our student body.”