Faculty passes P/D/F reform

The new policy will take effect next fall.

Current University policy requires students to declare their intention to P/D/F a course by the end of the fifth week of the semester.

Should students choose to rescind the P/D/F option, it must be done by the end of the ninth week, and it will still count toward the total of four classes which may be taken P/D/F over four years.

“We hope the new policy will keep students engaged for a greater proportion of the semester, because the P/D/F deadline will now be later in the semester,” USG President Connor Diemand-Yauman ’10 said in an e-mail to the student body.

The new policy, which passed by an overwhelming majority in a voice vote at the faculty meeting, was the product of “five to six years” of intermittent work on the part of the USG, said USG Academics chair Ben Lund ’10. Lund said the original proposal was created last spring by a USG working group and presented to Dean of the College Nancy Malkiel and Deputy Dean of the College Peter Quimby.

The proposal was then passed by the faculty Committee on the Course of Study and the Committee on Examinations and Standing before being submitted to the entire faculty.

The changes suggested by the USG were less dramatic than those presented in previous USG proposals, Malkiel and Lund said.

Malkiel mentioned “a lot of proposals [from the USG] in previous years that made no sense,” such as one that would give students the option to select a class to be graded on a P/D/F basis at the end of the semester.

“This is a much more moderate proposal, which I think still really benefits the student body,” Lund said.

Malkiel said the P/D/F policy tends to be adjusted about once every 10 years, with the most recent changes made in 1998.

The previous policy was faulted for not giving students enough time to decide whether to exercise the P/D/F option and for leading faculty members to believe students being graded on a P/D/F basis “bring a lower level of engagement to the work of the course than students who are enrolled for a letter grade.”

“Students still imagine using the pass/D/fail option to engage in intellectual exploration, but many of the courses they might wish to elect are unavailable on a pass/D/fail basis, and they are required to make decisions about pass/D/fail elections before they have sufficient information to know how they are doing in their courses,” said the Academics Committee in a document titled “Rationale for the Current Proposal” which was circulated at the faculty meeting.

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Diemand-Yauman said he was pleased with the outcome.

“In our personal discussions with USG members and students, the USG’s proposed P/D/F policy was extremely popular,” he said in an e-mail.

“I am extremely pleased with the outcome of the faculty vote and proud of this administration for pushing through the first major reform in grading policy in over a decade.”