Making The Grade

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Put something soft on the ground to cushion your fall because you are about to hear something from me that just may knock you out.

Hooray for pesky academics!

As my alma mater, Northwestern University, is on a quarter system, finals were supposed to be this week. With Coronavirus scrapping physical classes and shredding schedules, the provost, Jonathan Holloway, provided a novel solution: undergrads could choose not to take final exams and base their grade on the quarter’s work that was already graded. In addition, students could change from a letter grade to pass/fail weeks after the regular deadline. What a wonderful world we live in! Students relieved of the insufferable burden of taking finals and avoiding, as the Provost wrote, “the incredible stress that everyone is trying to manage.” Apparently the next mandate would be for dogs and cats to live together in joyous harmony.

So now the goal of college life is eliminating stress. For me, stress was finding an equally delinquent fraternity brother for a ride to south campus for a late-night Burger King run. Owing to everyone else’s general desire to achieve academic excellence, I usually ended up walking for my Whopper. Finals stress for my senior-year roommate revolved around whether or not he would set the curve, which for an astronomy and physics Phi Beta Kappa double major was definitely within his universe. My somewhat more earthly concerns were remembering which courses I was taking and when and where the exams took place. The idea, of course, was to hit the Bahamas for spring break, not treat classes as time on the beach.

So what could really be so wrong with going with flow, given that life in the country has ground to halt everywhere except on the Internet? Well, back to those pesky academics. In a happy coincidence of my academic major and phonetically-similar surname, political science professor Jacqueline Stevens wrote to her students, “…the Provost distributed an announcement offering options for your final paper and your letter grade, despite the fact that he lacks any administrative authority to do so. Only instructors have the authority to create, evaluate, modify, or eliminate the assessments for your final letter grade.” Uh, oh. A statistics professor opined, “But when this pandemic is over, you need to be able to look back and say ‘I was strong’. I am not going to make the final optional for your own good.” Pity the bureaucrat trying to pry open the tenured classroom door.

So why do grades from courses that few will remember, even fewer will care about, and none will cure Coronavirus today, matter? In times of declared emergency, be it from the government or the flip side of the same coin, academia, we need to hold officials to the highest standards of accountability. New Jersey’s governor “suggests” a statewide curfew of 8:00 PM. What does that mean, and how are you innocent of a suggestion when going for a nightly jog? Should our model to fight Coronavirus be the same as the country with insufficient, third-world medical facilities and a predilection for bats as high cuisine? Should Rutgers students, who get Provost Holliday in July as their new university president, worry that their degree may not be worth anything when the incoming administration just makes up the rules for grades?

It comes as no surprise that I’m more cynical than most about the current pandemic. At Madison Square Garden I’d be less worried about the guy sneezing 20 rows up than the health of players sweating on each other on the court, even if it were the Knicks. And while I enjoy my CrossFit as much as the other athletes, it makes sense to close public gyms, which are basically germ petri dishes, no matter how much you wipe the weights,. But as my coach, and mother of a 10 year-old, said on Sunday, “Great workout, wash your hands, don’t touch your face, and keep you social distance. Love you.” So on this St. Patrick’s Day let’s toast that solid advice, unless the Governor “suggests” closing the liquor stores.

© 2020 Alexander W. Stephens, All Rights Reserved.