Drop fee a good idea

3/13/13 7:00pm

 

The recent proposal by the Faculty Senate to punish students who drop courses during weeks three through seven of classes with a W mark on those students' transcripts is one that the Thresher strongly opposes. We do not believe the Faculty Senate's case is strong enough to justify changing student transcripts and that alternative, superior solutions exist. 

The Senate's proposal is based on the claim that students are abusing the current add/drop system by not dropping courses in the first two weeks which they intend to eventually drop. In courses which are full, this prevents students who would not drop the course from registering for the course. However, the Thresher does not believe that there is evidence to support the claim that this sort of abuse is the primary cause of course dropping in weeks three through seven. It is often difficult for students to gauge a course's difficulty until after the second week since many courses take several weeks to get up to speed and begin returning graded work. While the Thresher does not deny that some students may be abusing the add/drop system due to laziness or forgetfulness, we are unconvinced that the response to this situation should be to punish those who genuinely need more than two weeks to determine which courses they will be taking each semester. 

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If the Faculty Senate truly is of the opinion that too many students drop courses during weeks three through seven, the Thresher supports the proposal made by the University Committee on the Undergraduate Curriculum, with two minor caveats. We agree that instituting a $50 per course fine for courses dropped after the second week would provide an incentive to students to drop courses as soon as they decide to do so while also limiting the repercussions of dropping a course after week two. However, the Thresher also advocates putting a financial waiver system in place for students to whom the $50 would present an excessive burden. The Thresher further believes that the current new-student policy should stay in place for students in their first semester at Rice to allow those students time to get used to Rice courses and save them the additional stress of being threatened with fines for dropping courses after the second week. While this solution unfortunately still punishes students who are not abusing the current system, it is not as extreme a solution as putting a mark on students' transcripts. It should also be a strong enough incentive to those who are abusing the current add/drop system to drop their courses before week three and will thus give students trying to get into full courses more opportunities to do so. 

If the problem persists despite instituting the new fine system, the Faculty Senate will be able to revisit the issue with additional information. If not, the problem will have been solved without the necessity of extreme measures. Either way, the Thresher encourages the faculty senate to fully consider the consequences for students of its decisions - and to not make any assumptions about why students make the decisions they do. 

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