Grading in an Age of Pandemic

On February 18 (2021), I innocently tweeted that I had decided to give all my students A’s this term, or allow them to award themselves whatever grade they felt was fair. Little did I know that within hours the media would be contacting me, wondering what in the world was going on. Let me first explain what, exactly, is going on, and then why I made my decision.

The class in question is a senior seminar in comparative literature. There are 9 students. We are just past the half-way mark in the term, and each and every one has done A-quality work. I decided that, given the pandemic, it made sense to remove any and all sources of anxiety that might interfere with their openness, inquisitiveness, their will to be imaginative and critical into the final stretch. I knew many were suffering from fatigue and stress, and that they had many other classes to study for besides mine. The course centers on ideas of literary, photographic, and cinematic realism, as applied to times of catastrophe — Chernobyl, climate change, pandemics, wars. Their engagement and commitment have been amazing. They will still of course complete all the assignments, etc..

So why did I decide to do this at this particular moment?

At last week’s Stanford Faculty Senate meeting, a member of the faculty remarked that they felt the pandemic had had an unexpected benefit for students — he felt students now had time to sit and reflect on their educations. His remark was greeted by murmurs of assent. My reaction was to wonder which universe he was beaming in from, and whether he had any actual data to support his assertion. I highly doubt it.

The vast majority of faculty have little or no knowledge about what student life (both undergraduate and graduate) is like. Nor do they have any interest in knowing. Students are, by a large, a mass of faces and names on a roster. They may know a student’s name and style of thinking, but they have no idea of what a student’s life outside the classroom might be. Yet they make absurd statements like this as if they knew.

My students are not unlike many students today — they have been beckoned back to campus and then told to go away, they have half their possessions in a storage unit someplace, they have lost jobs, financial aid, housing, health insurance. Many are living in situations where they are caretakers, babysitters, cooks, and cleaners. They are living in many states of limbo. And so many faculty are so self-centered that they imagine none of these things affect a person’s mental or physical health, their ability to concentrate, their will to take intellectual risks. (Still, I have been in committee meetings when faculty cut each other enormous amounts of slack.)

Here’s a very clear example of the detachment from student realities that faculty enjoy. Professors sit and teach their Zoom classes (complaining and indignant of course). They are doing so in their homes or offices, with all their belongings around them. They are firmly situated in their time zones. However, students are logging from multiple time zones — I have students for whom it is 3 am, for others it is mid-evening. They could watch the video-recording of the session, but for them the loss of sleep is less costly than the loss of an intellectual community — they wish to converse, observe, question together. They have more will to learn than anyone. I fucking admire them. They have proven themselves deserving of recognition in every way I can give it. Grades are just one way.

Think of it this way — remember taking your driving test? We are taught follow all traffic laws, including obeying speed limits. With two exceptions — one is if there is a law enforcement or other personnel countermanding the posted speed limit. But the other is the weather — go only as fast as weather conditions allow.

Similarly, it seems ridiculous, inhumane, and in fact counterproductive, not to notice the conditions that apply to student lives these days.