Seniors Katherine Gardner and Jeremy Osborne took a cell biology class this semester at UNCG. Now, because UNCG’s final grades are not calculated until two days after Guilford’s commencement ceremony on May 8, they will not be allowed to walk with their fellow classmates.
Gardner and Osborne, who need the class for a major requirement, appealed to Kent Chabotar and Associate Academic Dean Jim Hood after having been refused an early exam by their UNCG professor. The administration stands behind the policy that is applied in these cases: Guilford students must complete all requirements before being allowed to graduate. Seniors who do not fulfill requirements in time for May’s commencement can graduate in July.
“To alter this policy would jeopardize this equality and open us up to significant numbers of petitions for variation,” Hood said. “A clear policy like the one we have now prevents us from having to deal administratively with multiple variations which drain time and energy from the registrar’s and the dean’s offices.”
It is difficult not to empathize with the students after reading their letters to the president.
“We have already appealed to the professors and administrators with jurisdiction over this matter and have found that their primary argument for not allowing us to walk with our class this May is that there is no precedence of special consideration for students in our unique situation,” reads a letter from Gardner and Osborne’s to college administrators.
“The argument that, ‘we have not allowed this in the past’ seems … inadequate.”
“It is a rule consistent with our core value of integrity since graduation is for graduates and not near graduates,” Chabotar said. “I do not think it is fair to assert that the only reason we will not make an exception in this case is because ‘we have not allowed this in the past.’
“You signed up for the UNCG class this semester (and) you did not take this class last fall when it was offered at Guilford,” he said. “You cannot ask the UNCG professor to give you an early exam. Guilford students who enroll at UNCG are told explicitly that early exams are rarely if ever allowed.”
“I suppose our main question is: what harm could come of allowing us to walk with the rest of our classmates?” Gardner and Osborne said. “Guilford has nothing to lose by letting us walk.”
Gardner and Osborne know that they probably will not walk, but they said their main objective is to change the policy to help future students in their predicament.
“They’re not going to budge,” Gardner said. “We’re not asking to graduate early, we just want to walk with our class. We love our friends, our friends love us, and we’d all like to graduate together in May.”
“I suppose there’s a chance that it could be changed, but given the strenuousness with which the policy has been upheld, it seems unlikely,” Hood said.
“There was a policy in the past that allowed students to participate in the May commencement ceremony if they planned to complete all requirements by July, but because there was so much abuse of that, the faculty took it upon themselves to change the policy,” he said.
Hood added, “I get no pleasure in upholding this policy. There are two things I have to do in this job that I don’t like: writing dismissal letters, and telling people they can’t participate in graduation.