Oregon daily emerald., January 18, 1978, Section A, Page 3, Image 3

Committee on Committees gets
senate approval on proposal
to abolish two committees
The University Assembly will hear three recom
mendations from the University Senate and a new
motion at today’s 3:30 meeting in 150 Geology.
The senate approved proposals by the Commit
tee on Committees to abolish the Educational Oppor
tunities and Academic Distinction committees. It also
accepted a revision of the grading system that would
allow credit from courses offered only by major de
partments on a pass-undifferentiated basis to be
counted toward the 45-hour residence requirement
for graduation.
The graded-hours vision would affect academic
majors only within their departments. According to
Robert James, Fine Arts department head, the
change would primarily help transfer students in
CSPA, education and architecture.
James says transfer students in those fields
often have to petition to get pass/no-pass upper divi
sion course work to apply to the 45-graded hour
residency requirement, or face the prospect of taking
that many hours in other graded courses not directly
related to their field to satisfy the requirement.
I he Committee on Committees proposals to
disband the two committees arise from the discovery
that they no longer function. Catherine Jones, Uni
versity business professor, says both have been re
placed by other channels.
The Academic Distinction Committee was
formed to recommend graduating students for
academic honors, but now the individual depart
ments and schools work directly with the Registrar's
Office to identify worthy students.
to the 65 percent rule to try to pre
vent such a mishap.
As of this term, the D will be
interpreted as unsatisfactory work
in determining academic proba
tion and warning.
Last term, when a student re
ceived six hours of A, B and C
work, three hours of incomplete
and three hours of D, he or she
was credited with passing 75 per
cent of attempted work because
the D was a positive factor. The
student could easily stockpile too
many D’s while being oblivious to
♦he consequences.
However, now that the D is con
sidered a negative factor, if the
same situation occurred, the stu
dent would be credited with satis
factorily completing only 50 per
cent of his or her work and would
be given academic warning.
According to University policy, a
student taking a class
pass/no-pass must do C work or
better to pass the class. George
Wasson of student services says
many students have been petition
ing to change N/P to D, not realiz
ing the implications of the latter.
“They don’t realize, however,
that in a few terms they could soon
accumulate as many as 18 D’s,’’
says Wasson. “They don’t realize
that a D can be more punative
than a flunk."
According to the 85 percent rule
for graduation, a student can ac
cumulate as many as 32 F’s in
his or her 186 hours at the Univer
sity end still pass.
Wasson also says there seems
to be a trend of more D’s being
given than either C’s or N/P’s, ac
cording to an earlier SDC report.
“The bottom line seems to be
that students are unaware of what
the grading system is doing to
them,” agrees Chris Munoz, as
sistant to the registrar and secret
ary of the SDC.
“It’s important that students are
sensitive to the amount of D's they
are accumulating."
Barbara Nicholls, counselor for
student athletes and an SDC
member, feels one of the big prob
lems with the D-grading system is
it is nearly impossible for anyone,
to understand, except for those
who work closely with it.
“Anytime a student can’t easily
understand his or her status and
how to change it by reading the
materials available to him or her,
we should reconsider the sys
tem,” Nicholls says.
She also says some advisors
are not quite up-to-date with all the
consequences either, unless they
continuously conduct followup
studies on it.
Not only does the new grade
cause confusion among adminis
(Continued from Page 1A)
trators, students and advisors, but
some individual departments
have had trouble deciding how
they would treat the D in terms of
awarding credit to their majors.
Most departments, however,
have decided to count the D as a
passing grade, with the excep
tion of political science, which
doesn’t accept the D, the law
school, which doesn’t use it at all
and the history department, which
still hasn’t made a decision on it.
Even though most departments
will honor the D, students should
be aware that in some schools
such as journalism, a specific de
partmental grade point average
(GPA) must be maintained (2.5for
journalism majors) to graduate.
The D was re-instated last term
to help combat grade inflation and
to make grades more meaningful
by allowing teachers to award
students with more precision. It
was argued that without the D,
students doing unsatisfactory
work would be given a C rather
than be flunked.
Nicholls and Degidio would like
to see some consideration given
to the re-instatement of the GPA.
"People used to object to the
GPA, because they felt it clas
sified people as being 2.4 persons
or 3.0 persons," says Degidio.
"But at least with the GPA, people
knew where they stood.”
Despite SDC efforts to make
the D and its implications clearer
to students, there seems to be
only one way to save yourself from
the perils of the D.
Just never get one.
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