The LSU Student Senate voted Wednesday to support Faculty Senate Resolution 15-11, which would remove “mid-semester examination period” from the academic calendar.
The legislation, Student Government Resolution No. 9 by senator Leah Sanders, was approved with 91 percent support. The result came after senators spent nearly two hours debating and amending the resolution.
Debate on SGR No. 9 began after six new senators were sworn in and took their seats on the senate floor. Abishek Stanley, Lily LaGrange and Josh Pickell were appointed to vacant seats for the University College Center for Freshman Year, and Marciel Whitehurst, Charla Hughes and Jessica Simpson took Graduate School seats.
The Faculty Senate resolution, sponsored by math professor Charles Delzell, aims to reaffirm the importance of mid-semester grades and abolish the mid-semester exam period from the calendar, though it does not translate to any changes in actual examinations.
“Teachers are still required to turn in mid-term grades,” Sanders said during the meeting. “There will still be a day when mid-term grades are due, which will still be in the syllabus and the academic calendar. It shouldn’t affect your syllabus too much.”
Joanie Lyons, the senate’s communication director, presented the results of a survey regarding the Faculty Senate’s resolution. Lyons said 137 students responded, and every senior college was represented, except for the School of Veterinary Medicine, the Paul M. Hebert Law School and UCFY.
Lyons said the second question of the survey read, “LSU Faculty Senate passed legislation to remove the ‘mid-semester examination period’ designation from the academic calendar. If approved, faculty would still be required to submit mid-semester grades, but there would be no official midterm week on the calendar. Do you agree or disagree with this decision?”
Around 86 percent of students surveyed said they agreed with the Faculty Senate’s resolution. A subsequent question asked students to elaborate on their answer, Lyons said, and most student answered that professors did not schedule their midterm exams in the period to begin with and that the period causes a “bottleneck” of tests that week.
The Senate amended the original resolution to include a designation for exact halfway point to serve as a checkpoint for students. The amendment would not change the date when mid-semester grades are due.
Some senators mentioned the idea of having grades due on the exact halfway mark, though Sanders disagreed with the idea. Sanders said she agreed with the amendment to designate the mid-point, but said it should be used for student deadlines.
“It won’t work,” Sanders said. “Teachers won’t be able to do that. If we do move the day up for mid-semester grades to be due, teachers will start to cram assignments and tests into this five-day period that we took out.”
Student Senate passes resolution to support removing mid-semester exam week from calendar
By William Taylor Potter
October 1, 2015
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