Oberlin College denies request to suspend failing grades for student demonstrators
In a rare act of sanity on the campus of Oberlin College, the school has refused to suspend failing grades this semester despite requests for relief from students who skipped classes and missed study time to engage in race-based protests.
A student petition, signed by more than 1,300, called for the college to institute a “no-fail mercy period” that would eliminate all failing grades and make a C the lowest possible grade a student could receive, the student newspaper reported.
President Marvin Krislov responded with an email to students on Sunday, saying he and the college’s deans opted not to grant the reprieve after giving the request serious consideration.
“We are in firm agreement that suspending grading protocols is not the way to achieve our shared goal of ensuring that students have every opportunity and resource to succeed,” he wrote.
Hundreds of students have participated in demonstrations in Oberlin and Cleveland in the wake of the fatal police shooting of 12-year-old Tamir Rice in Cleveland, the shooting death of Michael Brown by a suburban St. Louis officer and the death of Eric Garner in New York, the student newspaper reported.
“People’s communities are being mercilessly murdered and beaten in the streets every day around the world,” junior Kiki Acey, a student who helped draft the petition, wrote in a Facebook post, the student newspaper reported. “Others are being locked away by the millions for petty crimes. And many of us are still working every day just to be able to afford this education that fails to tell us how to free ourselves.”
The petition was given to Krislov on Friday.
“Administrators should require professors to exercise complete flexibility in what students are saying they can produce academically,” the petition said.
“Students in this moment should have complete access to alternative modes of learning while we process what’s happening. Basically, no student, especially black students and students of color, should be failing a class this semester. A “C” should be the lowest grade students can receive this semester.”
Oberlin College denies request to suspend failing grades to give relief to students who demonstrated (Cleveland.com)
Comments
The original request was silly. It causes me to question the quality of the students who go to this college. Most students who go to elite colleges are never really challenged even at the lowest level of endeavor. This was once a great music college. Now it is a laugh.
It is still a great music college. I would be willing to bet that very few Conservatory students were participating in this nonsense; they were most likely too busy practicing. I’d also be surprised if the hard science majors were proportionally represented. At any rate, the administration made the right decision. How would granting a “C” to a student who made the adult decision to skip class and/or not do the work be fair to the student who honestly earned that “C”?