If you have ever taken a class with Dr. Chris Bounds, you would know that he is a self-professed fan of “anthropinae.” Anthropinae, in paraphrased terms, is the art of being human. When applied to human communication, anthropinae necessitates direct person-to-person interaction.
Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, anthropinae, in its fullest expression, is a luxury that we can no longer afford in our school community, as traditional instruction is suspended for an online mode of education. These are tumultuous times of uncertainty. In the absence of traditional in-class instruction, a transition to a method of student assessment that best accompanies this new method of instruction is necessary. This is why on March 26, I started a Change.org petition to adopt a pass/fail (P/F) grading system for the spring semester of 2020.
I realize that for many professors and for some of the more high-achieving scholars in our community, this just sounds like me trying to get out of trying hard in my classes. Believe it or not, however, I consider myself part of that high-achieving group in this school community.
The idea for a transition towards a P/F scale came to be after seeing Research 1 doctoral schools like MIT and Dartmouth adopt similar measures. I found it odd: Why would a school overflowing with geniuses bother transitioning to a P/F scale? If anything, they should be the last school to even consider such a measure.
It took me a while to understand why an A-F grading scale is difficult to apply during this time. The effects of a sudden transition to online instruction on student performance aside, professors need a realistic way to assess students under these circumstances. It just isn’t realistic to act as though we can assess students with the same metric used when in a setting that has the systems and structures of traditional pedagogy.
Practically speaking, professors may find it harder to communicate content if they are not used to an online setting. Coordinating with students who are forced to move to different time zones, different countries or even different continents during this crisis is another challenge to professors who are working their hardest to maintain a semblance of normalcy by keeping class timings consistent.
Even the best intentions that our professors have for the student body may still be inadequate for a large percentage of students. As students, we have invested a heavy sum of money for in-class, person-to-person instruction because we recognized that it is valuable.
Traditional undergraduate education is not just about the in-person instruction, either. Students move to live where they are being educated because the college campus itself is a structure that facilitates learning and collaboration. Everything students do — where we sleep, when we work, when we have extracurricular activities — is organized around class attendance.
Online instruction doesn’t just remove person-to-person instruction; it removes the physical and social structures dedicated to facilitating learning. There are students who depended on on-campus jobs that accommodated class schedules for income security. These students now have to work in nonideal environments while juggling the hours of scheduled lecture time. There are students who have experienced head trauma and are unable to use a computer for prolonged periods of time. These students now have to choose between getting a migraine and missing course content. There are a million extenuating circumstances that students have to face and deal with alone when they are outside an undergraduate community created to support learning.
Now, it is obvious to many faculty members that these students should be addressed on a case-by-case basis. After all, Asbury is unique amongst undergraduate institutions for the genuine care and compassion that professors demonstrate to their students. But even with their willingness to accommodate students individually, I don’t think that GPA uncertainty should be something that is even left as a source of anxiety. Students should not have to reveal deeply personal circumstances and hope for grace from their instructors in order to be accommodated when they may already be under the extreme stresses that their personal lives bring.
All of that said, I need to be clear that I am not making a case for an exclusively P/F grading system this semester. I would be insane to do that. There are students applying to grad school who need to show a grade for this semester, pandemic or not. I started the petition with the intention of nudging school administration towards adopting some form of P/F grading. I did not create a concrete proposal to implement an actual P/F system for two main reasons:
First, the more specific my plan, the less support it will have as a petition since it would have more nuance. Nuance creates space for disagreement, not support. I am trying to start a conversation to see how a P/F system could be adopted, not give a presentation on what I think the administrators should do because: secondly, I am not an administrator. I am just a college kid who wants to look out for people who may be too busy struggling to survive in this crisis. Even if I made a full proposal and got right into the nitty-gritty details of implementation, I still wouldn’t think that any plan I propose should be adopted as-is.
However, as I conversed with several members of the faculty, it became more and more apparent to me that what I’m doing is perceived as a blanket proposal for exclusive P/F grading. Personally, I think that would be disastrous. In an attempt to alleviate this perception, here are some basic ways that a P/F system could realistically work at our school:
· Students who earn a passing grade (above C-) can opt to keep the grades they earned at midterm.
· Students can opt to use P/F grading right before they take their finals.
· Faculty members should decide on a course-by-course basis if they adopt a P/F scale.
This is a time of crisis. As much as some may be content to study from home, we must recognize as a community that not everyone has such a privilege. Whatever the administration chooses to do, I know that they do with our student body’s best interest in mind, and I pray that they proceed with prudence and an open mind to student opinion.
In the absence of the anthropinae that we experience in the classroom, I believe that we can still continue to exercise this noble art of being human. As students, let us continue to keep each other in mind and pray especially for those who may be floundering in this transition. To be human isn’t just to be physically close. To pursue anthropinae is to strive to reflect the true, full human that Christ was and to love as he did.
