King’s Forced to Implement Temporary Changes to Academic Policy for the Semester

I I Graphic courtesy of Draven Haefs

As COVID-19 has forced colleges to begin remote, online learning, King’s has joined many other schools in making changes to their typical grading scale in light of the pressures and flaws of online learning. 

This morning, King’s announced in an email from Provost Dr. Mark Hijleh, that they will be implementing two temporary changes to the academic policy for the Spring 2020 semester: an extension of the withdrawal deadline and a “Pass/Not Pass” grading option for classes. 

The deadline to withdraw from classes without negatively affecting one’s GPA is now April 22. Similarly, students have until then to decide if they’d like to opt for their class to be “Pass/Not Pass.” Neither a “pass” or “not pass” will count toward a student's GPA, however, a “not pass” will require the retaking of the course. If students should choose the “P/NP” for any of their classes they must fill out the form. 

This action taken by the school was preceded by a petition made by King’s sophomore Patrick Callahan last Thursday titled, “Make King's Classes Pass-Fail Due to the Coronavirus,” and signed by more than 170 King’s students. 

“While some schools have their signers in the thousands, I think our number is great considering how small of a school we are!” Callahan said. 

“I want to make it clear that I'm not gunning the faculty,” Callahan said. “I think they're handling the virus [COVID-19] very well, however, pass-fail would further help the situation.”

Callahan started the petition to communicate the opinion of the student body, which according to Johnson did prove itself “semi-helpful” when a faculty member posed the question, “Do the students even want this?” 

After catching wind of the petition, the Empire State Tribune took to Twitter on Saturday to see what the King’s community thought about the petition in light of the recent shift to remote-teaching. With more than 100 voters, the majority, 57.4 percent, said that pass/fail should be an option for students, and 42.6 percent said no.

However, regarding the correlation between the petition and the administration's decision, King's professor, Dr. Dru Johnson commented, “Before we saw any of these petitions surface on social media, the faculty and administration were proposing plans for the policy adjustment of Pass/No Pass in order to offer options to students.”

“The last thing I would want students to falsely believe is that a) they have collective persuasive power over grading policies or b) that they had to push us into what is essentially a relief policy for an extreme situation,” Johnson said.