Schine Backs EAC Decision

Author: Robert Schine

In its article "Graded Abroad," on the front page of the Jan. 29 issue, The Middlebury Campus reports, in error, that the Educational Affairs Committee (EAC) decided "hours before the vote" to endorse the amendment by which all grades earned abroad will be calculated in a student's grade point average.
To set the record the straight: the EAC, which I chair, learned of this amendment at the same moment as the faculty as a whole, when it was moved on the floor of the Faculty Meeting.
As President McCardell commented at the Town Meeting in January, what goes into a faculty meeting does not always match what comes out. That is precisely what happened to the EAC's motion on grades at the December meeting.
The Committee had no advance notice of the amendment. We had no opportunity to discuss it as a committee. There was no special meeting of the EAC, and certainly no "blatant disregard for the mutual trust that has long bound our community together," as suggested by Student Government Association President Ginny Hunt in the Feb. 12 edition of The Middlebury Campus. The amendment was brought, debated and passed at the Faculty Meeting itself. The student voice was not heard in the debate only because none of the representatives of the SGA who might have been present were present.
There are moments when unexpected things happen for which no individual or group is at fault. However, the mutual trust that is indeed the sinew that holds a community together will not be strengthened by fault finding, or fault seeking, where there was neither ill will nor willful neglect on anyone's part, neither by students nor by faculty.
If the SGA wishes to advance arguments against the policy now passed by the faculty, that recording and calculating grades earned abroad in a student's transcript is, as an educational policy, inferior to the policy we had before, then let's have that debate: on the educational grounds for greater accountability in study abroad. The faculty, however, which alone has responsibility for determining educational policy, has judged the new policy an improvement, both over previous practice and over the original motion presented by the EAC.


Robert Schine is Chair of the Educational Affairs Committee and Dean of the Faculty.