Photo by Kate Nuelle

The action was proposed by Brian Miceli and approved by the Faculty Senate before SGA conducted its vote.

Sophomore Noor Rahman explained that SGA approved the proposed changes to the grade appeal policy in order to make it easier for faculty and students to navigate the process.

“They changed it because some of the rules and the process was a bit ambiguous, so they just wanted to clarify it and make it easier to follow on both the part of the students and the faculty that are in charge of processing the grade appeal,” Rahman said.

Prior to the amendment, the grade appeal policy was less streamlined, and ambiguous timelines made the process longer than necessary

Associate vice president for Academic Affairs, Michael Soto, believes these changes to the policy will help accelerate the grade appeal process overall.

“Currently, a student must file a grade appeal with the course instructor within two weeks of the start of the following semester. The revised policy would keep this deadline in place, but it would add deadlines for responses from the instructor or department chair. It would also speed up later steps in the appeal process,” said Soto in an email interview.

One of the main features of the new policy is a specific time frame during which action must be taken.

“Before the new policy, students could appeal a grade from three semesters ago, but they made time limits so you can only do it within 10 days of the following semester.”

According to SGA president, Claire Carlson, SGA voted unanimously to amend the policy in order to expedite the Grade Appeal process.

“People can see the results within a short amount of time after they appeal the changes, but there wasn’t any contention from the senate, it’s definitely something that is going to make it smoother for both students and faculty in terms of the grade appeal policy going forward,” said Carlson.