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MCC Daily Tribune Archive

We Thought Everyone WANTED 5 Missing Grade Reminders


The R&R Shopping Network phones have been leaping off our desks with callers wanting to know how to get a free, clean grade roster. Here is an actual letter from one of our subscribers. Please disregard how nasty he makes the R&R Office sound. I'm sure he doesn't mean it.

"Last semester I taught two classes which had an annoying abundance of deadbeat and delinquent students." (Must be an English professor!). "When it came time to grade them I didn't want to give them an F because they hadn't earned an F grade. I called R&R and they told me to leave the grade blank but that I would have to WRITE AN ESSAY on the back of the grade roster explaining why I didn't grade the students. I reluctantly complied, explaining that the students had never attended my class. Then I was STILL sent FIVE, yes FIVE, missing grade letters asking me to grade the students. Apparently the students had not withdrawn from my class and it was now too late for me to submit a Faculty Initiated Withdrawal. I ended up having to give them all F's just to get the R&R Office off my back. There must be a better way."

Well, there IS a better way. But rather than tell it to you today, as promised, I feel I need to reply to the letter above and explain why we have to hound you for a grade even though you wrote your essays as asked.

We check out everything written on the back of the grade rosters. When you leave a student's grade blank and tell us he never attended we send that information to the Bursar's Office to determine whether we can drop the student or not. If we can, we do. But if we can't, we turn around and let you know we need a grade for the student. A student's transcript cannot have a course floating on it with no grade. If he registered and paid for a course, whether he attended or not, he needs a grade. In the above case, the F grades were appropriate.

TOMORROW (I won't promise this time!) I'll tell you how to keep yourself from getting into this position.


Deborah Benjamin
Registration and Records
04/21/2004