To the Editor:
This summer, I received my first report card from Oberlin. From the time my parents called to tell me that the envelope had arrived, my imagination ran wild. When I finally made it by their house, my hopes and fears both watched tensely as I opened the envelope.
What I found inside, though, disappointed me sadly. It wasn't that my grades were so bad. Rather, in all my anticipation, I had forgotten that this report card would be nothing more exciting than a few, simple letters. Whether these letters were better, worse, or equal to what I had expected, there was still no indication of why, of what had really gone into them.
In my small, private high school, things were different. There, the teachers could find time to write a brief individual evaluation of each student in each class. Sure, I have received a couple college report cards before, but it was easy to forget that, despite its differences from the more archetypical place I transferred from, Oberlin is in some ways just another college.
Later on in the summer, I spent some time talking with a friend of mine from Bennington, which has a lot in common with Oberlin. They have equivalents of winter term and ExCo, and I am sure that their admissions department would echo ours in the sentiment that one student could change the world. Yet in one important regard, Bennington is even more progressive: students there never receive grades. They get written evaluations instead.
When a recent administrative shakeup threatened that policy, my friend realized how much she valued it. It was yet another indication that her college valued students not for how well they conform to some norm, but for their individual contributions. When I got back to Oberlin, I took a closer look at the front of our course catalog. It turns out that here, you can get an official written evaluation of your performance - but only if you take a class credit/no entry. While I know that occasionally a student here will opt to take all their courses credit/no entry on moral grounds, for many people that does not represent a reasonable option.
Why not extend this option so that a student could fill out a form to get official, written evaluations for any class they took? The administration or the faculty might complain that this would create an unacceptable extra burden for them. But the bureaucracy is already in place, for CR/NE evaluations. And there could easily be a space on the required form for the professor to sign - or not sign, if evaluations were truly a burden.
Besides, it seems to me that if a student is willing to go to all the trouble of getting a form and assorted signatures, they really care about the answer they might get. These students, who will probably be a minority anyway, seem to deserve an answer. Sure, even under the current system they could just ask the prof., but a face-to-face answer might be more awkward and less honest, and it would definitely not be as official.
As a friend of mine just pointed out, Oberlin has always teetered between the ideal and what the rest of the world agrees is realistic. These days, it seems to be ambling towards realism. Let's take a small step towards the ideals that many of us came here for. I suspect it will feel good.
If you support the views in this article, tell your favorite faculty, senator, or administration person.
Copyright © 1996, The Oberlin Review.
Volume 125, Number 4; September 27, 1996
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