Black Students Demand No Failing Grades Due To "Trauma". This Is Only Going To Get Worse. In The Future, Will Colleges Automatically Give Degrees, Without Any Requirements, To Black Students?

Petition Demanding Black Students Be Exempt From Failing Grades Has 1,300 Signatures

 Beacon Staff /  December 21, 2014 / Education

Share ItTweet I

When Columbia Law School let Black students postpone their final exams because they might be “traumatized” by recent protests, they really let the cat out of the bag.

Now students at Oberlin College, one of the most liberal college in the country are demanding African-American students be completely exempt from failing this semester because they’re so deeply affected in “times like this.”

So far, the Ohio college has said they will allow professors to exercise “flexibility” in “emergency incomplete requests,” but has not given a flat out “pass” to all Black students.

This is making students really whiny. In a poorly written petition to Oberlin President Marvin Krislov – that has more than 1,300 signatures – the students lay out their “demands:”

Petition for Marvin Krislov to Suspend Standard Grading System

I would really like to see the normal grading system suspended for this semester and replaced with a no-fail mercy period. Administrators should require professors to exercise complete flexibility in what students are saying they can produce academically. Require that every professor listen to what their students are saying and if that means rather than writing a paper students instead meet with their professor to simply discuss in groups their paper topics or if tests are taken collectively with professors there are ways to make sure we are learning what we are supposed to be learning in ways that are not so taxing in times like this. Students in this moment should have complete access to alternative modes of learning while we process what’s happening. Basically, no student especially black students and students of color should be failing a class this semester. A “C” should be the lowest grade students can receive this semester. Professors should be required to work with students, who would otherwise be at risk of failing, to create alternate means of accessing knowledge. This is a – Petition for Marvin Krislov to Suspend Standard Grading System – sign if you agree!

Giving a free pass to Black students while requiring the standard academic rigor for everyone else? No, that doesn’t sound racist at all, does it?

Ironically, students cite Oberlin College’s graduation of its first Black student 19 years before the Emancipation Proclamation as evidence that the school should give Blacks a free pass now. That student, George B. Vashon, went on to become a professor at Howard University. Back in 1844, did Vashon get a “free pass” because things were so traumatic for Blacks? Of course not.

Anything less that equal academic standards and rigor for all students would set Oberlin backward, not forward.

And that these students don’t see that is very sad.