President Lee C. Bollinger announced today, 03/20/2020 that all classes in Spring 2020 will be graded with Pass/Fail. We believe that imposing Pass/Fail grades on students fails to account for the full scope of student needs, including the need for a full transcript during the job search process, various graduate school applications, and other considerations. We urge President Bollinger to reconsider this decision and offer students the choice to opt-out of Pass/Fail grading, or at the very least, provide a way for students to uncover grades at the end of the semester.

For more context, a petition requesting the change to pass/fail received over 4700 signatures. Yet, that same petition stressed the need to allow students to uncover their grades. The main reason behind this is that many students rely on their grades for applications to graduate schools in the future. For seniors, this semester is their last chance to boost GPA and build a strong academic profile before graduation. Moreover, future scholarships and other funding opportunities rely heavily on GPA and grades when choosing to whom to disburse funds. Graduates of the Class of 2020 will be competing against students from around the world, from other graduation years, and other universities, and there is no guarantee that the nature of these specific pass/fail grades will be taken into consideration. Lastly, transitioning to a mandatory pass/fail system now erases and disregards the hard work that so many students have put in up until this point in the semester.

We as students recognize the benefits that come from transitioning to a pass/fail system. However, if this system does not also allow students who need their grades to be able to uncover or even access them, it will end up hurting as many people as it helps. These are unprecedented times, and we recognize the need for unprecedented measures to counter them. Thus, we urge Columbia University to reconsider this policy that takes away students' power to choose, and even more significantly, the agency over their professional/academic careers.