Mail Ballot At UC Santa Cruz Reaffirms Earlier Grades Vote

SANTA CRUZ, CA–The members of the Academic Senate at UC Santa Cruz, polled via a mail ballot this fall, have reaffirmed an earlier vote implementing UC’s conventional grading system. The results of the most recent vote were announced late yesterday by senate chair Roger Anderson.

The grading legislation continues to permit UCSC undergraduate students to take courses on a Pass/No Pass (P/NP) basis. But, beginning with new undergraduates entering in fall 2001, no more than 25 percent of the UCSC course work that they apply toward graduation credit can be taken on a P/NP basis. No such threshold will exist for current students or new students entering UCSC before then.

In the mail-ballot tally released October 30, 240 senators voted in favor of changing UCSC’s grading system; 154 opposed the legislation.

A mail ballot, which can be requested following an in-session vote in order to secure the sentiment of the entire senate membership, had been sought by 27 senators following the senate’s meeting last February. At that meeting, the senate voted 154-77 for the grading legislation. The mail ballots were first distributed to senators last spring. But the returned ballots were never tallied because a senate committee determined that the mail ballot language differed slightly from the legislation that had been voted on at the meeting.

The language of the mail ballot was subsequently rewritten, and ballots were distributed to senate members earlier this month.

The grading legislation that has been adopted does not affect UCSC’s current requirement that narrative evaluations be written for all students in all courses. Still pending before the senate as unfinished business, however, is legislation proposed in a special meeting last December that would make the writing of "narratives" optional for faculty.

The discussion of UCSC’s Narrative Evaluation System will resume at a special meeting of the senate, scheduled for November 27; the senate’s regular fall meeting will take place on November 9.