Xie vetoes bill on new grading scales

After more than an hour of debate, legislators narrowly passed an SGA resolution supporting the University Senate's proposed plus or minus grading system. But that support was ultimately revoked when SGA President Kaiyi Xie vetoed the bill.

The Student Government Association resolution would have supported the policy — which the senate will consider Tuesday — on the condition that it only applies to incoming freshmen and transfer students who enter next fall. This clause drew opposition from Xie and several legislators because under the new policy — which would equate grades of A and A plus with a 4.0, and grades of A minus with 3.7 — the average undergraduate grade point average could be reduced by up to three one-hundredths of a point.

Although the potential decrease would most likely affect the highest-achieving students rather than those with lower GPAs, Xie called the SGA bill "blatantly unfair," arguing that by applying the policy solely to incoming students, upperclassmen and freshmen who sit in the exact same class next year could receive different GPAs for the same grade.

"Regardless of standing in a class … I should be graded and I should get the grade of someone else who tried equally as hard as I did," Xie said when he vetoed the bill. "I think this is so overwhelmingly inconsistent I don't think it even merits being implemented."

The bill's sponsor and business legislator Elizabeth Moran, along with other legislators, argued that regardless, implementing the policy is "inherently unfair." She noted that students taking a class next fall would have their grades calculated differently from students who took the same class the year before.

"It's unavoidable unless you want to go back and retroactively recalculate all the GPAs," Moran said. "It's an unavoidable discrepancy."

The bill initially passed in a 17 to 12 vote with one abstention — but Xie immediately moved to veto the bill. Under the SGA's bylaws, the body would have to wait to consider overturning the veto until next week, but because the senate will vote on the policy next week, Moran called for legislators to immediately reconsider.

"If the majority of the body is in favor of the bill versus one person who's not in favor of the bill … the students' voice should take precedence," Moran said. "It should take higher ground and that is what trumps the veto."

However, in a 15 to 10 vote, the body voted to uphold the veto.

During debate, business legislator Ira Rickman presented a poll legislators took of 523 students, in which 30.59 percent said they were in favor of the policy and 69.41 percent were against it. Furthermore, 54.23 percent of respondents said they would be in favor of the policy if it only applied to incoming students.

University senators and university Provost Ann Wylie said they decided to apply the policy to all students attending the university next fall because it would be consistent with the policies of peer institutions. Using different grading systems for students in different academic years would be too costly and incompatible with the university's current grade-calculating software, they said.

"We consulted with other schools that had switched, and they found no difficulty with the plan we recommended," Wylie wrote in an email yesterday. "It is not reasonable to run two distinctive grading systems."

However, several legislators noted that if a high-achieving student's GPA falls after the policy is implemented, potential employers may not look favorably on the drop.

"It may not seem like a lot, but when you're out there looking for a job and putting out your résumés … it's a big deal," Rickman said. "These are our grades we're talking about. This determines where we're going after college. All of us work hard every single day to get the best possible grade that we can."

Behavioral and social sciences legislator Nina Calmenson questioned the validity of the polls, and Moran noted that graduate and professional schools usually recalculate most GPAs when students apply to post-graduate institutions.

Moran also noted that when the senate overhauled general education, they voted to only apply the new requirements to next year's incoming freshmen — a precedent she said should also be invoked in this situation.

"This is putting everyone on equal playing fields in terms of the way they can achieve grades," Moran said. "This implementation suggestion is most appropriate."

villanueva@umdbk.com