During the last class of her introductory astronomy course, Erin Wells Bonning likes to read to her students a passage from Carl Sagan’s Pale Blue Dot . It’s the part where the renowned astronomer describes how his field can make our planet seem insignificant in the vastness of the universe. Yet this, he writes, “underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another.”
Bonning, an associate teaching professor of physics at Emory University, believes that, and it’s something she wants her students — mostly non-science majors meeting a general-education requirement — to carry with them. But this semester, the class was confronted with a harsh reminder of how idealistic that message can be. Not far from Bonning’s classroom, around the same time that she was reading the passage on April 25, police were breaking up a pro-Palestinian encampment and arresting protesters, including students and two professors, in a scene that drew national attention for its aggression.
As the campus community reeled, Bonning tried to figure out what to do about the final exam her students were supposed to take the following week. Many students, she knew, were shaken, even those without a direct connection to the protests. Bonning wondered, “What should I be requiring of students in the midst of all this turmoil?”
Though student demonstrations are spreading, they’re only taking place on a fraction of campuses. Not all of those colleges’ presidents called in the police; not all of the police have been as aggressive. But sooner or later, many professors do face a situation in which the academic calendar collides with a crisis that can make sitting for — or grading — an exam feel insignificant in the vastness. Most professors underwent a similar experience as they cobbled together remote finals in the spring of 2020. At such times, instructors make trade-offs and try to land on the least-bad option.
Bonning decided to make the final exam optional and told students that no matter how they performed on the exam, if they chose to take it, it would not hurt their grade. Bonning and the course’s lab instructors gave students information to help them figure out what grade they’d receive without the final. As the exam date approached, she wasn’t sure what to expect.
What should I be requiring of students in the midst of all this turmoil?
Just eight of the 62 students showed up for the final, including a student who already had an A. Bonning was a little surprised not to see more of them. But she wasn’t disappointed.
Like Bonning, Jennifer Wenzel, a professor of English at Columbia University, felt a responsibility to take some pressure off students and acknowledge the stress they were already experiencing in light of the protests over the war in Gaza and the arrests and police presence on campus in response them.
When she saw New York Police Department officers pull up to campus with an armored tactical vehicle on the evening of April 30, Wenzel thought, “The semester is over.”
The police were on their way to clear Hamilton Hall, which had been taken over by protesters following an earlier police crackdown on a pro-Palestinian encampment. The first police response had resulted in 100 arrests and sparked an escalation of protests at Columbia and beyond.
For all the attention that’s been fixed on Columbia this spring, said Wenzel, many observers don’t realize how difficult the response to the demonstrations has made daily life. Columbia’s Morningside Heights campus has been locked down, complicating students’ access to dining halls and libraries.
The university has acknowledged the pressure that this puts on students academically. Columbia College and the College of General Studies announced that students could select one of any of the courses they are taking to receive a “Pass/D/Fail” instead of a letter grade under the normal system — usually they are given that option for only one elective course. (That was later revised to up to two courses.) The other undergraduate schools have made similar adjustments. The university also moved exams scheduled for the first day of finals, May 3, to May 10.
But Wenzel thought these moves didn’t go far enough. After the first “Pass/D/Fail” change was announced, she wrote to several deans, advocating that students should have that option for all of their courses. Strategizing about where to use the option just adds another layer of stress, she thought. She never heard back.
Wenzel pondered how to give the 37 students in her course on South African literature and culture more relief. She decided to make the final project or exam (they could choose either) optional and told students that completing it could only improve their grades. She also gave them more time to complete the exam, which they’d take online, if they chose to take it. Wenzel announced this plan to the students.
But when she didn’t hear back from the deans, she felt her own adjustment didn’t go far enough. Students usually get As and Bs in her course. She didn’t want them to use the “Pass/D/Fail” option when it might help them more in a different course. She wanted everyone to get through the semester as successfully as possible, in all of their courses.
So she decided to give everyone an A. Those who already had an A would be bumped to an A+.
This is the kind of decision that’s bound to be mocked by those who think students are soft and professors overly deferential. So it’s worth nothing that Wenzel isn’t thrilled with where she landed. She said she’s mourning a lot of things now, including the way her course typically ends, with students synthesizing all they’ve learned. And while there are professors who don’t put much stock in grades, Wenzel isn’t one of them. She’s long identified with the iconic academic overachiever Lisa Simpson.
She doesn’t think she’d have given everyone an A if the university had allowed students to be able to receive a “Pass/D/Fail” for all of their courses. The president and trustees who decided how to respond to the demonstrations, Wenzel noted, aren’t in the classroom. Whatever is driving the choices they’ve made, it doesn’t seem to be learning.
Plans That Reflect One’s Values
Stress can divert cognitive resources, making it harder to think clearly. That’s true for instructors, who should give themselves some grace, said Flower Darby, an associate director of the Teaching for Learning Center at the University of Missouri, who frequently writes about teaching for The Chronicle. Instructors should extend that grace to their students, she believes. Even when it’s clear that a crisis is affecting students, it won’t affect them all in the same way, and professors are unlikely to have enough information to predict students’ individual experiences.
If she were teaching during such a moment, Darby said, she might tell her students, “I would invite you to propose to me how you think you can demonstrate your learning in this class so we can both feel legitimate that we assessed your knowledge and understanding while accounting for the circumstances that we find ourselves in.”
There is never a perfect response to a disruption, like the recent protests and the ensuing police response, said Karen Costa, an author and faculty-development facilitator who also teaches as an adjunct. Instructors work in different institutional contexts and have varying degrees of job security. What all of them can aim for, Costa said, is an imperfect plan that reflects their values “as an educator and as a human.”
Professors often feel a sense of urgency about a broader crisis, Costa said. It’s good for them to remember what is and is not in their power. They probably can’t set institutional policies on finals or grades, but they can act in the space of their own courses.
“It’s not checkers or chess, this work that we are trying to do,” Costa said. “It’s both.” Professors have to figure out immediate concerns like how to get grades in on time. But later, when things have calmed down and they’ve had some time to reflect, they can turn to longer-term plans. That can mean designing courses with more breathing room built in so that adapting is easier when the next crisis strikes. It can mean creating a community so that even if their institution doesn’t take care of them, they can deal more kindly with one another.