Some NIU graduates might have received their degrees without enough credit hours and faculty want to make sure it does not happen again.

In the spring of 1988, more than 100 students used stolen registration stamps to get into classes resulting in a controversy about who has the right to administer grades and credit hours, faculty or the administration.

Communications Professor Charles Larson filed a lawsuit against NIU for breach of contract claiming 13 students’ were given academic credit by NIU officials for classes they illegally registered in after Larson took the credit hours away from the students.

Art Doederlein, Undergraduate Studies director for the communications department, said students who graduated with the help of the credits obtained through false registration might not have graduated with enough hours.

NIU accepts the students as fullfilling their degree, but the students’ professors might not, Doederlein said. University policy states faculty have the sole right to give grades to students, he said.

“There were no grades changed,” said Associate Provost Lou Jean Moyer. “The grades were held until such a time students could go through the judicial office” for due process, she said. “Administrators do not change grades,” she said.

However, Doederlein said, “That is wrong.” Faculty were told to “put the grades on hold” until after students could go through due process, he said.

Some of the grades for the permit classes that were deleted as a result of false registration were changed back to the original grade by the Provost’s Office, Doederlein said.

A “delete” counts as never having taken the class.

In most cases, the grades would have been changed to an “F” because of department policy; however, in order to be consistent, the faculty gave “deletes,” Doederlein said.

After the students went through the NIU judicial process and were found guilty of illegal class registration the students received a “delete” by professors, Doederlein said.

NIU Registration and Records accepted the changes requested by the Provost’s Office, he said. “Of course all of this (the grades) is subject to appeal,” he said.

Moyer said, “Very definitely there was some faculty concern. The university’s concern was that students got due process.”

The situation was “solved very reasonably and in a way that was appropriate. You can never satisfy everyone.”

The University Council was asked to address the issue and prepare a policy to better handle similar situations in the future. However, the issue of who has the power to change grades was lost in the shuffle, Doederlein said.

UC Executive Secretary J. Carroll Moody said “there were a lot of compromises.”

“I never was sure whether or not grades had been changed,” Moody said. “No grades were changed, but there was something done. Something happened,” he said. “It was a real mess.”

Moody said that was not the first time controversy arose about an administrator possibly changing the grade a faculty member had given a student. “There were at least a couple of other instances,” he said.

Doederlein said an associate provost, not Moyer, prior to the registration stamp instance also changed the grades given by a faculty member, Physics Professor Larry Sills.

Sills denied comment on the instance.