Faculty Senate passed a resolution Thursday to change the University’s “W” policy at its monthly meeting.
The new policy allows students to drop a class without receiving a “W” up to the seventh class day, and the last day to add a class is now on the eighth class day. The current policy allows students to drop classes on or before the sixth class day and add classes up to the eighth class day.
Student Government Senate passed a resolution Sept. 29 to extend the “W” policy by two days. Faculty Senate’s Admissions, Standards and Honors Committee rejected the SG resolution during the fall semester, but the two sides made a compromise to have the policy extended by only one day.
The Faculty Senate passed the new resolution Thursday with one opposing vote.
“This is a policy students really do want and care about,” said SG Vice President Dani Borel.
Jeffrey Wale, SG director of academics, said many faculty members use the first class day to go over syllabi and don’t get into course material until the second class day.
Under the current policy, students taking classes on Tuesday and Thursday only have one class day to get a feel for the class, Wale said.
Wale said passing the resolution is the first step in making the change, and details must still be worked out with the Registrar’s Office.
“We do see a lot of students adding classes on the seventh and eighth class days,” said Robert Doolos, University registrar.
The final decision for changing the withdrawal policy belongs to the Provost’s Office.
LSU System President John Lombardi spoke at the meeting to answer questions from senators on budget cut topics like fee increases, budget proposals and TOPS.
“The first good news is that it does not appear the budget will be as catastrophic,” Lombardi said.
Lombardi said his best guess is the budget presented to the Legislature will feature less than a 10-percent cut to higher education.
Faculty Senate also discussed issues like guidelines for interruptions to the calendar year, admission requirements to the University and faculty members’ right to assign student grades.