To Whom it May Concern: 

Despite Bryant’s continued effort towards a safe and healthy community, the pandemic has placed unfathomable stress and anxiety on undergraduate students, faculty, and staff. Normalizing traditional expectations in the pandemic environment would be an institutional oversight. Expecting students to be held to the same standard with an increased workload, an accelerated semester with no breaks, on top of external factors like supporting sick, or laid off family members, mental health struggles, and general anxiety, stress and uncertainty surrounding the semester is ignoring the needs of students. With the ever changing landscape of the coronavirus, it has been extremely difficult for students to remain engaged in academic studies when so many factors of their identity are being impacted. Fellow students, faculty and staff are being diagnosed with the virus right on our very campus which really impacts the emotional stability of community members on our campus. Considering Bryant administration has been known for prioritizing their students' needs second, this is an opportunity for the university to show students their well-being matters. About ¾ of college-aged students have reported seeking mental health support on one or more occasions since the inception of the pandemic. Assuming this is not parallel to trends on our own campus would be a naive perspective. 

It is important to consider other factors influencing our distance learning like time differences for our international students, accommodations for students with disabilities, and students who have non-conducive learning environments at home, or at school. While we did sign up for college, this is not what we anticipated or expected out of our college experience.

After careful consideration of feedback from the Bryant community, a student-led coalition urges Bryant administrators to consider easing the Fall 2020 grading policies in light of the unconventional circumstances and stresses of the Coronavirus Pandemic. Featured in the below appendices are established, four year institutions who have followed the needs of their communities to loosen grading policies for the Fall semester. If Bryant choses to veer from their Spring grading policy, using the below colleges as a metric are sufficient and encouraged.

Exhibits: 

University of Massachusetts Amherst 

“Though faculty and returning students have had time to adjust to remote instruction, the economic and other stresses of the pandemic have not disappeared. To alleviate some of the stress students may experience, the university will operate under a partial alteration of undergraduate grading mechanisms”

Modified Grading for Undergraduate Students and Undergraduate Courses for Fall 2020:

All Letter Grading only courses will be changed to Letter Grading with Pass/Fail option.
Students will be allowed to select Pass/Fail grading for up to three courses.
The deadline to declare Pass/Fail will be extended to Friday, November 20th.
The current University policies restricting the number of Pass/Fail courses a student can take in a given semester and restricted usage of Pass/Fail courses for satisfaction of major, School/College, and University requirements including the General Education and Writing curriculum will be suspended for the Fall 2020 term.
Undergraduates enrolled in graduate-level courses (600 or above) follow the graduate grading rules in which, for most courses, a SAT (satisfactory) grade is available instead of the elective Pass/Fail option available at the undergraduate level.  Undergraduates enrolled in graduate-level courses must make arrangements with the instructor prior to the end of the semester to receive a SAT instead of a letter grade.
Actual course grades may be needed by the student for application to graduate school, medical school, professional programs, other post-baccalaureate purposes, and to meet scholarship eligibility requirements.  Students have up to six months after graduation to select a letter or pass grade before their University record/transcript is “frozen” and no further changes are allowed.  After this period, if a student has a course in which a pass grade was received but requires a letter grade (see potential reasons above), the student may request an official letter from the Registrar’s Office indicating the letter grade that was submitted by the faculty member.
Grade Recording Process Note:  The grading scheme that applies to each course, (e.g, Mandatory P/F, Letter Grade only, or Letter Grade w/option for Pass/Fail) is specified when it is submitted to the Registrar’s Office to be offered the next semester.  For courses with a grading scheme of Letter Grade w/option for Pass/Fail (also known as “Elective Pass-Fail”) the instructor submits a letter grade earned for every student. If the letter grade is F, it is a Failing grade and is factored into the GPA. If the student receives a passing letter grade (A through D), an initial computation of the cumulative average will be made. This average will include all graded courses from prior semesters as well as graded courses from the current semester. If the course elected Pass/Fail during the current semester carries a grade higher than the initially computed cumulative average, the reported letter grade will be recorded and the cumulative average recomputed; otherwise the P or F will be recorded.  This ensures that there will be letter grading (A through D) for students whose GPA will be helped by receiving the actual letter grade they earned in the course. 

University of Virginia 
“We decided to revisit our grading decision after many exchanges with students, student leaders, and faculty and staff who work most closely with students. They reported high levels of stress, anxiety, and personal and family challenges among our students, and all encouraged the deans and me to consider flexible grading options this semester. We decided to revisit our grading decision after many exchanges with students, student leaders, and faculty and staff who work most closely with students.  They reported high levels of stress, anxiety, and personal and family challenges among large numbers of students, and all encouraged both the deans and me to consider flexible grading options this semester.  After extensive discussion, we settled on the policy I am announcing today— the ability for undergraduate students to choose a CR/GC/NC grading option in their classes no later than November 6, 2020. While no decision about grading will be welcomed by all, on balance, this solution seemed the most targeted to the legitimate and serious concerns raised by students, faculty, and staff, without changing the grading system in ways that would have additional consequences for students and faculty who are relying on giving or receiving standard grades.  Several details about this policy are important: 

Courses taken for CR/GC/NC during fall 2020 will count toward curricular, major, and graduation requirements; however, we cannot be sure how courses taken for CR/GC/NC will be treated by graduate and professional school admissions, licensure requirements, or other similar future endeavors. You should research your options and use your best judgment when deciding how you will receive your grades this semester. 
Unlike last spring, we will not make any changes to your current grading options. If you take no action, your classes will remain graded as they are now.
Students who wish to opt-in to CR/GC/NC for one or more of their classes will have the opportunity to do so in SIS the week of November 2-6, 2020.  You will have until November 6, 2020, at 11:59 p.m. EST to make this decision in SIS. During that week, students may change their mind for any class up until the deadline.  Students who choose CR/GC/NC will not be able to reverse that decision after 11:59 p.m. EST on November 6, 2020.
If you opt into CR/GC/NC grading, a CR grade will be awarded if you meet the class requirements for credit (C or higher), GC will be awarded if you receive a passing grade below a C, and NC will be awarded if you receive a grade of F. CR/GC/NC grades are not factored into your GPA.
UVA will include a notation on your transcript for fall 2020 to indicate that the CR/GC/NC option was offered during the COVID-19 crisis.
This policy applies only to undergraduate students. Professional schools with no undergraduate students (Darden, Law, and Medicine) are not affected by this change. The deans of schools with graduate students are considering how they will approach this question, and they will soon announce their decisions to their schools.

Examples of National Fall 2020 High-Education Grading Policies:

https://www.educationdive.com/news/a-few-colleges-loosened-fall-grading-policies-will-others-follow/587125/