by Amber McLaughlin
Staff Writer
It looks like an F but it’s really not an F.
A new grade designation, withdrawal failing grade WF, will be added to grade sheets beginning this fall for both undergraduate and graduate students.
The WF grade represents a student who stopped attending the course without processing a withdrawal with the office of the Registrar.
It is still an failing grade that is calculated into the student’s cumulative grade point average. It is a non-official withdrawal that reports when a student walks away from a class up until Nov. 1, the last day to withdraw. Anytime after that it will not count as a WF grade, it will be an F.
“I don’t see it as having an impact on students; it just clarifies,” said Marilyn Davies, the University Registrar. “I encourage students to make an informed decision before walking away from a class. We are all here to help.”
The University of La Verne’s undergraduate and graduate committee as well as the general faculty voted to approve it, which was unanimous.
Eric Bishop, director of academic advising and student retention said, “This is a policy ultimately employed by the Registrar’s office, but that is required because of federal financial aid regulations.”
The reason it got added is because the University is responsible for returning money to the federal government or federally insured lenders if students are not actually attending classes.
Currently, ULV does not have a process to collect the information for students who stop attending without notification.
“Many other schools do it, and it works. It was proposed previously, but the time has come for us to put it into place,” Bishop said.
The impact on the Registrar’s office is that the Faculty Feedback Forms that are now in place, will become a guide for financial aid. If they are alerted that a student is not attending a class, they will inform the financial aid office.
Whenever a WF grade is marked, a date of the last attendance for the student must be written in. WF grades submitted without the last date of attendance will be reverted to an F grade
“Students need to properly withdraw from the Registrar 60 percent into the semester no matter what level a student is,” Davies said.
Professor of journalism, George Keeler, chair of undergraduate academic policy committee said, “I wish students would learn that we can’t automatically drop them for not attending. They just can’t disappear; they must do the paperwork.”
“This is a no win situation, and everyone is affected. The WF grade hurts the student’s GPA, the teacher feels bad for giving it, and ULV has to give money back to the federal government,” Keeler said.
