The Undergraduate Senate passed three academic bills Sunday with little to no opposition.
Bills to replace the current Freshman Forgiveness rule with a policy that extends to all students, to extend the period for changing grade type from A-F to pass/fail and a bill to allow students to take 14 credits at another four-year institution, rather than six credits, passed yesterday.
These bills encourage the Student Government president to recommend these new policies to the administration. The sponsors are confident these bills will be well-received by the administration because they had input in the writing of the bill.
The bill to replace the current Freshman Forgiveness rule, sponsored by College of Arts and Sciences Sen. Victoria Glynn, would allow a student to repeat up to two courses at anytime during their AU career within one calendar year.
The two grades would be averaged for both full-time and transfer students in their GPA, but the first grade would still remain on the student’s transcript.
For first-semester freshmen, however, the grades would be replaced rather than averaged.
The current policy, which has not been updated since 1975, allows for students in their first two full-time semesters who received a grade of F or incomplete in a course to repeat that course within the next calendar year.
It is currently possible for a student to use Freshman Forgiveness for all of their freshman courses, according to Glynn.
Glynn’s second bill would extend the period for changing grade type from two weeks to four weeks. Currently, students must designate whether they will take a class graded A-F or pass/fail at the end of the two-week add/drop period at the beginning of each semester.
Class of 2011 Senators Ed Levandoski and Meg Miraglia said this bill would aid students in block classes, who only have two classes by the end of the current period, and study abroad students whose semesters do not necessarily begin at the same time as the regular AU semester.
Class of 2010 Senator Steve Dalton sponsored the bill to allow students to take up to 14 credits at another four-year institution in their time as an AU student. This is an increase from the current maximum of six credits, aside from study abroad credits.
However, these outside credits would not count toward a student’s AU GPA.
Dalton said 14 credits was the number agreed upon because most students take 15 credits per semester. He said if a student were able to graduate a semester early, the university would lose out on tuition and other fees.
Dalton also said he would eventually like AU to recognize two-year institution credits taken as an enrolled AU student, but his bill only calls for four-year institutions.
SG reform bills passed Sunday include bills to amend impeachment proceedings and to reform the use of proxies in the Senate.
The bill to amend impeachment proceedings was also sponsored by Dalton, inspired by fall 2009’s impeachment trial against former-Comptroller Matt Handverger.
The bill is a clear process by which an impeachment hearing will be run and puts significant roadblocks to “frivolous impeachment proceedings,” Dalton said.
The trial cannot last longer than one day and should be approximately two hours, at the end of which a vote by secret ballot will be taken.
The bill is intended to remove the possibility of rogue senators, as three senators must file written impeachment charges to “jump off the cliff together,” Dalton said.
The bill to reform the use of Senate proxies, sponsored by Adam Daniel-Wayman, a senator for the class of 2012, codifies a system for proxies because the former rules were inconsistent between undergraduate speakers. Proxies are fill-ins for senators who cannot attend the Senate session.
“If the past two weeks have not demonstrated the need for internal reform, nothing ever will,” Daniel-Wayman said.
Other bills passed were to add more trash cans and recycling bins around campus and to replace the trees felled by the recent snowstorms, sponsored by Eric Reath, a senator for the class of 2013. Another bill reallocated $743.81 from the Artemas Ward Week account to the Spring Fling account.
You can reach this staff writer at sdazio@theeagleonline.com.
