Thank you for your reading. We are students in Engineering related majors or considering taking career paths after graduation. Recently, we heard lots of messages from instructors saying some departments may change to a mandatory pass/fail grading policy for Spring 2020 and we are really concerned about this. 

We do understand this is a hard time for everyone and we respect the work our school has done. For the grading policy, we do have our concerns for reasons. 

• Give students the option to decide their grade benefits most of the students. 
  Indeed, students are being affected by the coronavirus, just like everyone else in the world. Our school has made a quick decision and allows students to choose Credit/Non credit or a letter grade freely, thus those who are not able to fully focus on their coursework already have an option to prevent their gpa from being damaged due to the fact they can not control by choosing to change their own grade to Credit/Non Credit. However, there are students who do need the grades of this semester no matter seeking for jobs or applying for grad schools. We should respect their opinion on having letter grades for this semester. 
• Changing to No-exception pass/Fail harms the interest of most of the students in UIUC. 
  We have heard that many excellent universities have decided they will give the option of changing grades to their students, such as UC Berkeley, Carnegie Mellon University, UC San Diego, University of North Carolina at Chapter Hill, University of Pennsylvania, Duke University, Washington University in St. Louis, Rutgers University. If UIUC decided to change to No-exception pass/Fail, students from UIUC will lose one semester grade compared to students from other competitive universities, then this policy will definitely affect all the students from UIUC because credibility of pass/fail grade is much lower than letter grade. The teaching effectiveness will be much lower.
• Hard to alter assessment strategy is not an excuse for not giving letter grades. 
  The Office of the Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs has announced related policy for the whole campus. The pass/fail option is only anticipated for courses where the assessment modification makes it difficult to fairly assign letter grades. Many courses  except experiment courses can be taught online, there is no need to have face-to-face classes. Besides, if different departments have different policies, there will be two different grading methods occurring on the transcript as many students choose courses from different departments. We are not the only one who are undergoing this hard time. Everyone needs to make a change to adjust to the reality. Companies started work from home from Early March and companies are operating perfectly well. We don’t see google, facebook and amazon shutting down because employees might find it hard to work together, then why do our courses give Pass/Fail grades because of the difficulty of assessment? 
• Changing to No-exception pass/Fail is not fair for students expecting grades better than C.
  In most of the cases, having a grade of Pass/Fail would be considered as a C grade in grad school application. It has been half of the semester and most of the students have put their efforts in every well-designed course in their department. Receiving a grade of Pass/Fail is not fair to those who are expecting an A/B for the course. They are not asking for a letter grade only based on the excellent work they have done. Making half of the semester's hard work mean nothing on the transcript is not fair. Therefore, we sincerely ask for fairness for all students in this community. Giving option to students to choose from letter grade or Pass/Fail is a kind of fairness. 
• The grade of this semester may be indispensable for some students
  There are many master students who will only register for three semesters in total, they need the letter grades to apply for PhD or find a job. A transcript with one third pass/fail can’t show their academic outstanding at all. Besides, many transfer students from other countries study in our college, they have to get letter grades in order to transfer the credits in UIUC back, pass/fail may not be accepted by their home universities.
• Let’s do the best for our University and Department together at this difficult time.
  We, U of I, offer one of the most outstanding education around the world, and that’s why our community is having so many talents contributing everyday. We sincerely hope our University/Department should keep offering great quality courses and education even in this hard time and let us be outstanding all the time, which is the best for our university and department in the long run. 

In fact, many other students have the same concern, and we hope that our voice can be heard by the committee and senate. Finally, hope you can keep healthy during this special period. Thank you!