While the Sept. 7 story in The Northern Star entitled “Instructor to take NIU to court” was correct in most parts of its reporting of my actions in response to the “REG” stamp fraud of spring semester, 1988, I would like to clarify several points. I never attempted to change the fraudulently enrolled student’s grade to “F” for the course. What I said to the Star reporter was that after sending in my grades for the semester, I discovered that the student had been illegally enrolled and that “my initial inclination was to give her a grade of ‘F’ for the course since cheating is always grounds for an ‘F’ in my classes,” but after consideration I decided to change the original grade to “grade deleted” since the student shouldn’t get any grade for a course for which she was not legitimately enrolled. Subsequent to that and after checking several times with my dean and the associate provost on the dispensation of the matter, I learned that the student’s grade had been changed (according to your quotation by the associate provost of Sept. 9, “…the only administrative grade change (emphasis added) after the original change to ‘Delete’ was to restore the original grade given by the professor.” Since the student was never registered for my class, I could not have given her a grade of any kind—she was never a legitimate student of my class. Thus ‘Delete’ was the most appropriate “grade” for the class.

Secondly, there is no such thing as an “administrative grade change” cited anywhere in my contract with this university (i.e., the written contract and those documents to which it refers—the Constitution, various manuals and handbooks, and regulations of the Board of Regents). If such a change took place, NIU breached its contract with me and the instructors involved (in my department alone there were 10 to 12 instructors involved). As a result I asked the University Professionals of Illinois to support a class-action suit against the university for breach of contract, The local UPI governing board unanimously agreed to recommend that action to the organization as a whole. Faculty rights have been nibbled away for the past several years. Maybe the courts can put a stop to this. If the associate provost can give grades, why do we need a faculty?

Charles U. Larson