The following is the opinion of Knights Media Network and students in the COMM 333 class: Anna-Maria Beck, Dalila Bevab, Logan Clark, Johnny Daniels, Wynn McDonald, Samantha Moore, Katelyn Norris, Grace Potts, Lauren Upchurch, Leah Wilkinson and Alex Willis.
COVID-19 has indirectly affected many students, and Bellarmine has taken note. The new pass/fail grading option has many excited — us included, for the most part. Everyone has has felt the academic impact of shifting to online-only classes due to the coronavirus pandemic, and we think students deserve some leniency during this time, especially with so many petitioning to implement the option. However, there are some loopholes to note.
Now, this new option may have sounded confusing at first. How will my GPA look? How will this show up on my transcript? Is it really a good thing? These might be questions many are asking, and we had the same thoughts.
If you receive a passing grade, your GPA will not be affected. However, if you receive a failing grade, your GPA will reflect that (an “F”). If you receive a passing grade, your transcript will read “pass,” instead of a letter grade. And yes, this option would seemingly be a good thing, but it should be used only if you are not doing well in a class. This pass/fail option also applies to only certain courses.
If you are performing well in all your classes, this option is probably not for you. If you are performing well in four out of five classes, consider the option of pass/fail for that fifth class in which you’re not doing well. It’s nice that this isn’t an all-or-nothing sort of thing; students who may be struggling in two or three classes can choose to pass/fail in those classes specifically.
We weighed the pros and cons and reached a conclusion: this pass/fail thing is good… mostly… kind of…
The option is great because it allows for many students to receive a benefit — although perhaps rather small in the grand scheme of things — from this unfamiliar second half of the semester. Students who benefit might include those who may have otherwise performed well in certain classes but might currently be struggling since the classes made this shift.
It’s a way for the university to offer some assistance to many during a time when there’s so much stress virtually everywhere else our lives.
Of course, the downside of this pass/fail concept is that it’s not applicable to all programs. For instance, most — if not all — courses in fields of study such as nursing, physics, biology, exercise science, chemistry and math, among others, cannot be graded as pass/fail.
Although the new option is great for many, the courses listed above are taken by a large chunk of our student population, making this new option inapplicable to lots of students who may feel they could desperately use it.
It makes sense for these courses to not be taken at pass/fail grades, as so many of the courses require precision (i.e. nurses must receive a solid grade in nursing, as they could be the difference between life and death when treating someone for the coronavirus) but it seems a little unfair considering the large population of Bellarmine students who must take these courses for their majors.
According to the university website, the top five majors are as follows:
Nursing 13%
Psychology 10%
Business Administration 8%
Exercise Science 8%
Biology 7%
This means there’s a solid chance a very large number of students will not be able to select pass/fail as an option for at least some, if not all, of their courses.
Someone may be able to select pass/fail in most of her classes and feel much more relaxed come finals week, while her best friend can’t select pass/fail for a single course. And one might argue, “She knew what she was signing up for when she declared that major,” but did she really think she’d be placed in a situation in which she’d be miles and miles from school, forced to do everything online? Without a professor physically in the classroom or lab to assist? Probably not.
Is this Bellarmine’s fault? No, but it just doesn’t quite seem fair. While the majority of the school population succeeds under this new option, many won’t even be given the option to select it, which makes us question the implementation of such a concept at a school with many to whom it doesn’t even apply. It’s great for many, but most definitely not all.