Whether it’s due to natural disaster or a pandemic, it’s time for universities to sever ties with standards. Trauma is not a competition, but I’m pretty sure my students and teaching colleagues have had more than a “fair” share this semester. I think it’s high time we lower our standards, for everyone, everywhere.
Thanks to this pandemic, universities around the world have switched entirely to online learning. This fact alone has caused massive stress among faculty, because converting courses meant to be delivered in person to an online format is time-consuming and, at times, impractical. I know — I am one of those professors. I teach philosophy at Arkansas State University. Administrators told us in early March that we should prepare for potential online instruction.
The plan was to do a two-day “trial run” the following week before we eventually resumed our regular in-person classes. Three days later, we were told there would be no trial run. We needed to convert our classes to online instruction — immediately.
It takes time to record lectures, learn to use unfamiliar technology, devise new ways to hold office hours, revamp how you assess student progress, and alter your expectations about what successful attendance and participation look like. This is labor for which professors will not be compensated. And as my colleague Rebecca Barrett-Fox recently noted, administrators exploit us enough already; we shouldn’t feel pressured to make this a perfect transition. In fact, her advice is to “do a bad job of putting our classes online.” What she means, of course, is that as faculty, we need to cut ourselves some slack, realize our own vulnerability and anxiety in all of this, and not break ourselves trying to prove that we deserve a pat on the back.
Administrators at my university have been overwhelmingly accommodating and helpful with faculty despite the unprecedented nature of these immediate and tenuous new policies. Like many universities, faculty are permitted to pause their tenure clocks during this crisis, and there will be no student evaluations of faculty performance this semester, something many unions have been advocating for in primary, secondary, and postsecondary education ever since the outbreak got serious.
Not much could have prepared us for another disaster to hit. On Saturday evening, a massive tornado struck the city of Jonesboro, Arkansas, where our university is located. The school was only mildly damaged, but the town was devastated. The only bright spot was that, with the quarantine guidelines in place, fewer people were out and about than normal, and so far no casualties have been reported. However, many people, including faculty, staff, and students, are now homeless, their houses ripped apart by the powerful tornado. To make matters worse, in the midst of all this tragedy, I have now heard concerns from colleagues about a spike in cases of Covid-19 in the area, as all these displaced people are congregating in shelters or trying to help one another rebuild, thereby breaking with social distancing orders.
Imagine what it’s like to be a college student in the middle of all this mess — away from home, watching the world effectively crumble all around you, worrying about your own health, your family, your friends. Maybe you have been displaced by new dorm policies that force you to vacate. Maybe you are an international student and have traveled across the world to be back home, only to find it nearly impossible to meet with your class during designated Zoom meetings. Despite all that, you must adjust to this “new normal” of online instruction and carry on, all the while fretting over your grades.
All educational institutions, graduate programs, law schools, and internships need to agree: Grades don’t fucking matter this semester.
Before all this, students were told that dorms and dining halls would remain open during this pandemic. For many — especially those in rural and poor areas, such as the towns surrounding Jonesboro, Arkansas — campus is the safest place for them. It might be the only place where they can get nutrition and reliable internet.
But as the pandemic worsened, administrators decided that after spring break, only students with viable reasons to stay on campus would be permitted to do so. This means that my students who went home to stay with family this past week, and who would have been returning to live on campus to finish the semester, will instead be moving their things out and leaving campus indefinitely. Unless they can demonstrate a genuine need to live on campus, it is in the community’s best interest to shut down as many of the university’s face-to-face transactions as possible.
My students are already overwhelmed, afraid, and stressed. Some are worried about their graduate school prospects. One of them asked me what will happen if they cannot complete lab work for science classes — classes that have minimum grade requirements for veterinary school admission, for example. (I had no answer for this student.) Several of my students have withdrawn entirely from the semester.
Grading has been the topic du jour at my university. A number of universities have decided to grade entirely on a pass/fail basis in an attempt to fairly assess student work in the wake of this pandemic. Some argue that this is what every institution of higher learning ought to do. Others are not so convinced. There has been a lively discussion about this on our faculty Listserv, and admittedly some points raised have opened my eyes to perspectives I had not yet considered. For example, it might not be so equitable to shift to a pass/fail system if we consider that for many students who are seeking admission to graduate school programs, there are specific GPA requirements or courses for which a minimum grade is needed to qualify the student for placement. Students in practical disciplines like nursing would be affected by this change. Likewise, there are students who have worked tremendously hard this semester trying to improve or maintain a GPA. They would be devastated to learn that the A they were carrying in my Intro to Philosophy class was going to be counted the same as the C some other student earned. Then again, it is equally unfair to demand the same standards of students right now as we have in previous semesters. What does it even mean to earn an A versus a C when literally everyone is panicking and should be applauded for showing up at all?
Now is not the time to feebly grasp onto tradition.
Watching my university community struggle in the wake of this tornado has made me realize that nothing is fair anymore. There is no simple solution that will fairly address each student’s specific situation, which is why student buy-in to this decision-making process is crucial. The only solution I can envisage working would involve system-level change. All educational institutions, graduate programs, law schools, and internships need to agree: Grades don’t fucking matter this semester. No one should be punished for receiving a pass as opposed to an A in a class. Medical schools mustn’t revoke admission simply because a student did not get better than a C in a lab. Instead, everyone deserves to be rewarded for making it through this semester alive. If you happen to have completed the shitshow of an online class your instructor cobbled together while she was taking care of her children who are now at home, continuing to work on her publications, and not losing her mind, then good for you! You pass the course!
Now is not the time to feebly grasp onto tradition. Now is not the time to think that any kind of standards apply anymore. Now is not the time to assume we can be fair to anyone. Everyone is suffering. Some of us just got the bonus trauma of a natural disaster thrown on top of our already crippling anxiety about a virus. Now is the time for compassion and understanding. Now is the time for saying screw standards. Most importantly, now is the time to reflect on how so many of our normal practices at universities could use some rethinking in the future if we hope to ever have genuinely fair grading, teacher evaluations, and tenure or promotion protocols.
And if my students are reading this, just know that I feel for you and I care about your well-being more than a stupid letter grade. Do the minimum and I will count it maximally.