Facts Regarding the FAQs: Frequently Asked Questions About Withdrawals #2
Thank you for your tips on how to lose 50 pounds by Mother’s Day. I now welcome tips that do NOT include the removal of limbs.
It just occurred to me that I should be constantly repeating the withdrawal deadline in these articles---April 27th. And that I should also be asking you to share these articles with your friends and colleagues who don’t read the Trib. I’d like to get this information out to everyone but don’t want to destroy an entire forest to do so. For every student we get who tells us they didn’t know about the deadline we also get a professor who is surprised that he/she can’t give a “W” when they do their final grades. Any help you can give me on getting this deadline information out would be appreciated.
Q: I had a student who said he didn’t have time to fill out a withdrawal form and take it to R&R and asked me to withdraw him. I don’t normally withdraw students so this request annoys me. What do you think?
A: I would love to tell you what I think but I know Janet Ekis would censor it and the ‘answer’ part to this question would never get printed. Cleaned up version: I would make it clear to the student I had no intention of doing his withdrawal work for him. Then I would make a note in my attendance/grade book of the incident so when he came back at the end of the semester to complain about the “F” grade I could remind him of the conversation.
The exception to this would be if a student called me from the hospital or had another legitimate reason for being unable to do the withdrawal himself.
Q: I have a student who is repeating my course. The first time he took it he received at “D”. He’s doing even worse this semester and wants to withdraw. I know the college’s repeat course policy states that when a student repeats a course the most recent grade is the one that counts. Does this mean he can erase the “D” by taking a “W” this semester?
A: No, the “D” will not be overridden by the “W”. You are correct in stating that the college’s repeat course policy says that the most recent grade counts. BUT, it is the most recent standard letter grade that counts. If a student receives a non-standard grade, such as “W”, “I”, “WI” or “AU”, then the original grade is still in his GPA.
Q: A student I had in my class several years ago just contacted me about changing his “F” in the course to a “W”. He says he withdrew from all his other classes but forgot to withdraw from mine. I checked his record and he does have all “Ws” for that semester except for the “F” in my class. What are your thoughts?
A: The key phrase here is ‘several years ago’. We do have a process by which students can question their grades for 20 days after the end of the semester. Revisiting these issues years later usually means that the student accepted the grade when it was given but now, due to job or college applications wants to revise his transcript to make it more appealing. If the student felt he had a legitimate issue with the grade he should have taken care of it when he received his first grade report. I would tell him it was too late to revisit the grade.
Q: Withdrawal deadlines are always clearer for fall and spring semesters than for summer and intersession. Can you help us out with summer and intersession deadlines?
A: Yes, I’ll try to remember to publish something about the deadlines for these shorter sessions at the beginning of the sessions. Students also get confused and for some reason think that they can withdraw AFTER these classes end, just because they are short I guess. I would urge everyone to remind their students that there are no withdrawals after a class ends, no matter how few class meetings there are.
Deborah Benjamin
Registration and Records
04/18/2007 |