When Students Want You to Change Their Grades

This is part of an actual email I received from a student (with minor alterations to correct spelling, punctuation, and grammar, and to hide the student’s identity):

The student seemed completely unaware of the irony involved in asking a professor to falsify records to help them enter a course of study on the rule of law.

Evaluating students used to be a three-step process: Write the test, give the test, and grade the test. But there is now a fourth step, which occurs with unfortunate regularity: Deal with students asking for special consideration after they’ve missed the test.

Over the years, the makeup policy on my syllabus has grown in detail and in snark. Despite this, I inevitably receive emails asking for special consideration. Virtually none offer details, explanations, or justifications that fit with the syllabus’s requirements for a makeup exam. Virtually all tell me they are “reaching out” to ask for my help and my understanding. Many include some variant of the notion that “it never hurts to ask” as part of their rationale.

Let me be clear. It does hurt to ask. I’ve come to see these interactions as not merely minor inconveniences but as fundamentally problematic ethical dilemmas. When students ask faculty to disregard clear policies, they are not merely asking us to be flexible. Rather, they are asking us to violate our professional ethics and engage in institutional dishonesty.

A syllabus is more than a suggestion. It functions as a contract between the instructor and the student, and the university and the instructor. When I establish a policy that permits makeup exams only in cases of documented emergencies, I create a framework for equity among all students. Students who ask me to break the rules for their convenience are effectively asking me to treat them preferentially at the expense of their peers who took the exam despite their own hardships or accepted the consequences of an exam grade of zero.

The rhetoric of “reaching out” deserves special attention, as it seems to have become the standard opening line for these unreasonable requests. “Reaching out” frames the request as an interaction between a vulnerable student and a powerful faculty member — it foregrounds innocence and tries to mask an unreasonable demand as a meek, sympathetic, respectable step.

The phrasing inverts the actual power dynamics at play. While professors do hold evaluative authority, students are “reaching out” to put emotional, ethical, and professional pressure on faculty members. “Reaching out” puts the instructor in a no-win scenario. Say “yes,” and you may violate your own policies and compromise your ethics. Say “no,” and you risk being viewed as uncaring and unsupportive and having the request escalate into a complaint or grievance.

The potential threat created by refusing to give in to students is significant for part-time instructors and adjuncts, who fear reprisal manifested as poor teaching evaluations or direct complaints to department chairs or advisers. If a college uses teaching evaluations or the percentage of withdrawals or D’s and F’s assigned as a measure of faculty competence, it increases the likelihood that faculty will comply with even unreasonable student requests. These patterns, understandable as they are, merely exacerbate the problem because they lead to ever-more students using the “it never hurts to ask” strategy.

So how do I deal with these requests? First, I accept the frustrating reality that handling them requires time, emotional labor, and the work of thinking through an ethical dilemma. I need to assess the student’s excuse with empathy but not naiveté, keeping in mind the fairness implications for other students. Each unjustified request requires me to process my own initial emotional reaction (often disappointment). I need to investigate, partly because students fail to provide basic background information. Which course are you in? Which exam did you miss? Did Blackboard actually go down when you said it did? Were you actually logged in at that time? Did Blackboard actually grade your exam wrong? Verifying (or simply attempting to verify) these assertions requires time and often involves a call or email to Blackboard support.

Next, I try to write a response that maintains boundaries and explains my rationale. If the student is dissatisfied with my response, I am opening the door for them to rebut my denial of their request. They may also file a grievance against me.

Some of what hurts is the selfish nature of the request. The logic behind “it never hurts to ask” suggests that the mere act of asking is harmless and morally neutral, which is far from true. Another feature that makes these requests so troubling is the implicit assumption that this exception would be our secret. If I announce that I’ve made an exception for one student, then I would have to make the same exception for everyone else (or at least in any similar context — and who decides what details to include or not include in the new policy exception?). As such, there is an implied agreement that this waiver would be private and would become, in effect, an educational conspiracy.

Many professors will disagree with me, arguing that providing exceptions demonstrates compassion and flexibility, traits that should override adherence to policy. That rationale gained support during Covid lockdowns, when there were implicit norms and explicit recommendations of leniency toward distressed students. To them I would respond: Covid lockdowns are over, and true compassion is not exercised through inconsistent administration of policies but by the application of fair rules. Moreover, when I make exceptions for situations that are clearly inconsistent with syllabus policies, I teach my students that rules are negotiable, that special treatment may be available to those who ask, and that ethical principles are at best situational.

Excessive compassion and the quest for student engagement come with drawbacks of their own — they create competition among faculty. Some faculty members choose to acquiesce to even unreasonable student requests to avoid the potential for a subsequent hassle. That may seem understandable, but it is shortsighted. Future student prodding or “reaching out” over grades will be sure to note that other faculty members have been accommodating in the past. Giving in to such demands and creating that precedent makes it difficult for other faculty members to impose and stick to their own standards.

There is one more reason why providing students with excessive flexibility is counterproductive: When they enter the work force, they will discover that employers rarely offer the same level of special accommodation that has taken hold in academe under the umbrella of compassion toward students.

Where do we go from here? I am contemplating instituting a new syllabus policy that would anticipate and respond to students asking me to violate my own policies. It would ask them to explain, in writing, how my theoretically granting their special request would be an ethical act, given the established rules of the classroom and my responsibilities to their peers. It would also ask them if asking me to violate my own ethical principles is itself ethical on their part.

Some will say that it would be too hostile to ask students these kinds of questions. To such critics, I respond with the same justification so many others have given to me: It never hurts to ask.