OBERLIN STUDENTS WANT TO ABOLISH MIDTERMS AND ANY GRADES BELOW C

Students say their activism work doesn’t leave them with enough time for course work

By Becca Stanek

The Week
May 2016

Students at Oberlin College are asking the school to put academics on the back burner so they can better turn their attention to activism. More than 1,300 students at the Midwestern liberal arts college have now signed a petition asking that the college get rid of any grade below a C for the semester, and some students are requesting alternatives to the standard written midterm examination, such as a conversation with a professor in lieu of an essay.

The students say that between their activism work and their heavy course load, finding success within the usual grading parameters is increasingly difficult. "A lot of us worked alongside community members in Cleveland who were protesting," Megan Bautista, a co-liaison in Oberlin's student government, said, referring to the protests surrounding the shooting death of 12-year-old Tamir Rice by a police officer in 2014. "But we needed to organize on campus as well — it wasn't sustainable to keep driving 40 minutes away. A lot of us started suffering academically."

The student activists' request doesn't come without precedence: In the 1970s, Oberlin adjusted its grading to accommodate student activists protesting the Vietnam War and the Kent State shootings, The New Yorker reports. But current students contend that same luxury was not granted to them even though the recent Rice protests were over a police shooting that took place just 30 miles east of campus.

"You know, we're paying for a service. We're paying for our attendance here. We need to be able to get what we need in a way that we can actually consume it," student Zakiya Acey told The New Yorker. "Because I'm dealing with having been arrested on campus, or having to deal with the things that my family are going through because of larger systems — having to deal with all of that, I can't produce the work that they want me to do. But I understand the material, and I can give it to you in different ways."

EDITOR’S NOTE: What’s next? Abolish finals and any grades below B? Compared to colleges and universities in China, Japan and European countries, American academia is becoming a joke. I can foresee degrees being printed on toilet paper because that’s all they’re going to be worth, especially if President Obama and Hillary Clinton get their way by providing everyone in America with a college education.

Apparently, Oberlin students believe that activism is more important than studying. I wonder where they got that? Me thinks I smell some Marxist profs lurking in the background.

And what do they mean by ‘activism work’? All you have to do is look at the college-age participants in the Black Lives Matter and anti-Trump demonstrations and you have the answer.

The Oberlin students remind me of my old days on the faculty of College of the Mainland where the Marxists controlled the administration for more than 30 years. They would never give their students any grade below C. The Marxist profs and their fellow travelers on the faculty believed Ds and – God forbid – Fs were punitive grades.