At least once during college, students get a grade they feel they don’t deserve.
While most sigh and look forward to the next quarter, few know that they can actually do something about it.
The Cal Poly Fairness Board works to protect the rights of students in grade disputes with professors.
The 10-member board is comprised of a tenured or tenure-track faculty member from each college and two Associated Students Inc. appointed student representatives. It deals with grade appeals by discussing written explanations or by having a hearing where both the student and professor settle a dispute through due process.
The board, established in 1969, hears cases based on students’ complaints that an instructor has made a mistake, shown bad faith or incompetence, or been unfair.
“If a student gets a grade they think is unfair from the professor and they haven’t received a satisfactory outcome from the professor or department, they discuss it with us to find a remedy,” said Fairness Board chair Greg Bohr.
Yet, one Cal Poly electrical engineering student had a different experience with the board when the only evidence he had was thrown away once he had returned from active duty in Baghdad.
Geoff Lewis brought his case to his professor, the department head, Student Affairs, the Disability Resource Center, the Fairness Board, the vice provost and the provost in 2003, and none could give him the fairness he sought.
“I had a problem with a professor because I felt he was grading unfairly, but my situation was kind of unique because I was going to the DRC and everyone else kept referring me back to the DRC,” Lewis said.
Lewis started the process of going to different outlets on campus two quarters before he actually went to the Fairness Board in January 2003. He was activated a week later in the guard and had to go to Baghdad for a year.
“By the time I got back, the professor, knowing I had a grievance with him, had thrown the finals away,” Lewis said.
“I got frustrated and gave up,” he added. “There’s no oversight, it’s like a fox watching a chicken coup … everything was wrong; it was just horrible.”
The only person to side with Lewis was an electrical engineering professor.
“(The board) turned the case down because the test didn’t exist … all you’d need to do is throw the test away,” the professor said on grounds of anonymity, alluding to how ironically unfair he believed the board to be.
The source said he brought his own senior project to the board in the ’80s and never went to a formal hearing.
“The rules were too open to confront and the burden of proof was on the student … so I was wondering, what cases do they take?” the professor said.
“The first approach would be to come to me and have a conversation,” Bohr said. “I’d give them some advice on whether or not they have a valid appeal for us. They would then provide a written letter of complaint and I’d distribute that to the board and we’d meet to decide if a hearing is needed.”
Hearings are decided upon when the board believes that a grade change is likely. Then a request is made to the provost of Cal Poly, who can decide whether a grade change will be made.
An appeal has to be made with evidence; a student brings in the test or project in question. Bohr said past appeals involved a professor’s syllabus or Scantron discrepancies.
Appeals should be made within the quarter after the grade was assigned so that professors have the evidence on file. But the board has accepted complaints up to a year after.
From the 1991-92 academic year until 2005-06, records show that there were 133 total cases and 59 actual hearings.
“It breaks down by year after that, but there really is no pattern,” said Gladys Gregory administrative assistant for the Academic Senate.
“In 2002-2003 there were seven letters and six hearings, and in 2003-2004 there were 24 cases and 16 hearings,” she said. “But there were also years where there was nothing … in 1999-2000 there were zero cases.”
The cases that didn’t go to a hearing were resolved at different levels or were deemed insufficient to have a hearing.
This past year, the board was able to resolve the three cases brought to them without going to a hearing.
Chris Parker-Kennedy of the DRC is a new member on the Fairness Board who sat in on an appeal last spring.
“It ended up being something we just met up on, just one time, and we came up with a temporary solution,” Parker-Kennedy said. “There weren’t really grounds for an appeal and the head of the committee ended up making a decision.”
While the board has not called in both sides of the dispute since she has been a member, Parker-Kennedy said she understands that the board is fair and it considers all sides.
However, when questioned about the lack of cases brought to the board, her response turned to the other outlets students have on campus.
“My guess would be that since we have a dean of students now, students feel they can go there to be heard,” Parker-Kennedy said. “In referring students, I tell them that the people that work in that office are student friendly and they advocate for students. I always say if you want more immediate, more informal resolutions, go the dean of students.”
But, by no means does the dean of students replace the Fairness Board. The small number of cases brought to the board out of the approximate 18,000 students that attend Cal Poly, is most likely due to a lack of knowledge that such a committee exists.
Bohr said that the cases come in bits of randomness and also by the way that students hear about the board.
“(Students) aren’t going to know to come to us, but we are working on changing that through the Academic Senate to spread the word through departments and faculty,” Bohr said.
The board is also working on making the process easier for students. While the board has to assume that the professor is correct, as stated in the description of the Fairness Board and its procedures, it is trying to communicate directly with students in a more efficient manner.
“What happens sometimes when a case is resolved informally, there are a couple of avenues where (the student) talks to the dean of students and other members of the academic senate,” Bohr said. “We are trying to streamline the process so that they don’t get bounced around.”
Cal Poly’s Fairness Board, while actively trying to assists students for the past 38 years, has seen six revisions to its description and procedures document since 1973. Records are now kept classified and the committee is still largely unknown.
The question remains; do students feel comfortable going to a board of mostly faculty members? Do students feel like they even have a chance if they are “guilty until proven innocent”? Regardless, the board is there for those willing to fight for a grade.