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About Oregon daily emerald. (Eugene, Or.) 1920-2012 | View Entire Issue (April 7, 1978)
Grading system can be ‘D’stressing By RICHARD SEVEN Of the Emerald When the D grade was rein stated after two years in academic limbo, it was argued it would stem the rising tide of grade infla tion and enable professors to grade more precisely and justly. “It was felt,” says William Lamon, associate professor of education and a key figure in bringing back the D,” that the grading system of A, B, C, F needed refinement. The gap bet ween F and C was too wide. The gap had to be filled with a grade far below mediocrity, but still pas sing.” Without the D, teachers were often accused of “saving” a stu dent doing below C standards by giving him or her a C instead of an F grade. Whatever the reasons for the implementation of the new grade, it seems to be causing students, faculty and administrators more confusion than they bargained for. One teacher tells of a student who was caught plagiarizing a final project. The teacher gave the student three grading options, who chose an F for the paper and a D for the course, despite the teacher’s effort to explain the trouble the new grade could cause. Apparently the student was and may still be convinced that by getting a B in another class she could even out the D to main tain a C average. Not so. Part of the confusion has been caused by the five different rules (50, 65, 75, 85, 95) the University uses to interpret the D. Under current University policy, the D counts as positive credit to ward University general require ments of 186 accumulative credit hours. However, a student must also satisfactorily pass 90 percent of his or her classes at this University to graduate. This means a student graduat ing with 186 credit hours can have no more than 18 hours of D credit. If so, he or she will have to take more classes. The University uses a 65 per cent rule to compute academic warning and probation. This means a student must satisfacto rily pass 65 percent of the work attempted. In this case, the D is considered a passing grade. So a student taking 15 hours a term can get three hours of D a term and never be placed on warn ing or probation. This means a student can surpass the allowable limit of 10 percent Ds and never be alerted. Don’t think it doesn’t happen. Since the beginning of winter term, the Scholastic Deficiency Committee (SDC) has not moni Chicken menu re —1[continued fom page a) Another manure manufacturer, who preferred to remain anony mous, operates a 50,000 broiler farm west of Junction City. She hasn’t been doing so well in the manure business. “We re too far out,” she explains. She entered the market only recently. Bob Papannen, who owns a 90,000 chicken farm on Rattle snake Road in Dexter, has been successfully selling manure for four years. Demand for manure, Papannen explains, varies with the weather. Wet springs, like the one Eugene had last year, dam pen the manure market. Wet ground makes the manure hard to spread. Even with the constant changes in manure demand, Papannen usually makes enough off manure to pay for replacement sawdust, with profit to spare. A check on the commercial ma nure market shows chicken ma nure has sales potential. A 50 pound sack of industrial fertilizer can sell anywhere from $4.85 to $7.25. This doesn’t begin to com pete with chicken manure which in comparison is dirt cheap. A company in Salem has picked up on the low cost of chicken manure, and has started bagging it. Indus trially bagged, chicken manure sells for $1 a 50 pound parcel. As a product chicken manure also has its draw backs. It’s rich stuff and should be spread care fully. Dormitory residents should not buy chicken manure for their plants. ’ But if spread thinly, chicken manure offers a high crop yield. Manufacturers sell it mixed with sawdust, which dilutes the 75% nitrogen content. Once the ma nure has mellowed in the soil, al most anything will grow. Garden ers can watch their seeds grow into juicy chicken manured vege tables, or they can sit on their plants when they are wee. That’s the kind of a world we live in. tored the number of students placed on warning or probation, but those guilty of violating the 90 percent rule has increased from 234 in the fall to 352 in the winter. The Office of Student Services has been sending letters to these 352, but Assistant Registrar Chris Munoz, says it’s far from a satis factory answer. “It’s no solution," says Munoz, “It’s just a measurement to warn people who are getting them selves into trouble. If the D trend continues to rise, which right now it looks like it will, I’m going to the SDC to come up with a process to monitor cases of academic warn ing and probation.’’ Counselor Jane Farrand De gidio, says transfer students, along with freshman and sopho more students, should be espe cially aware of the D’s implica tions. Transfer students should realize the 90 percent rule applies to work completed at this institu tion only. It doesn’t matter if they come from previous schools with D-less records. So if students come to Oregon to complete their last 90 hours, they would only be allowed nine hours of D each, not 18. If that isn’t confusing enough, Shirley Wilson, director of Student Services, says students who are put on academic warning and/or probation are also finding it dif ficult to understand. “A lot of students have been coming in wanting an explanation why they were put on academic probation because of Ds without ever being on academic warning,’’ says Wilson. According to University stan dards in interpreting the D, Wil son says, "In some cases one D grade in a term wouldn’t be enough to place the student on warning, but say two more the next term would put him on proba tion. “Academic probation, of course, limits the hour load a stu dent can take to 18 hours, and more of the same academic per formance can get him or her dis qualified. Wilson says not only do stu dents find themselves in this situa tion more often with the D grade than with the F, but in some cases students have been choosing to take Ns or Fs rather than Ds. This brings us to another rule and another paradox of the D grade — the 85 percent rule. Under this ruling students can accumulate 32 hours of F, in all work graded, while they are al lowed only 18 hours under the 90 percent rule. Wilson says when a student doesn’t need a class and the D might put him or her on probation, the student often chooses to take an F. Lamon says the grade was orig inally intended as a “compassion ate” grade to help those students, particularly in the hard sciences, who try hard but can’t keep up with majors in the field. However, admitting the system has become more punitive than compassionate, Lamon agrees, “There are just too many rules.” As of yet, it seems the SDC doesn’t intend to make any revi sions in the process. In the mean time, students should be aware that scraping by with a D is not saving themselves. 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