The Faculty Senate discussed a student grievance procedure and a change in grading policy on Wednesday.

A proposal was made for the re-institution of a committee for addressing student grievances. Members of the senate body expressed concern for the vagueness of the proposal, and questioned whether or not it was the Faculty Senate’s responsibility to make a committee to discuss the topic.

“I really don’t understand what sort of appeals would be made,” said associate psychology professor David Valentiner.

There was a previous formation of the same committee in 2004, which did not produce anything due to its size and because it was hard to define acceptable and unacceptable behavior for faculty.

“We posted documents on BlackBoard to address what would fall into this category,” said Faculty Senate President Alan Rosenbaum. “Despite whatever procedures we place, the Office of the Ombudsman still receives grievances.”

Ombudsman Tim Griffin said a student has no ability to appeal beyond the department chair about their problem.

“The frequency of students having these problems was low enough that making a committee would not be too costly,” Griffin said. “The number [of student grievances] are about six to 10 times a year.”

Valentiner said he felt the student grievance policy was very necessary.

“We should have some way for students to hold faculty responsible for misconduct,” Valentiner said.

Another topic discussed in the meeting was a proposal to change the current grading scale to include plus and minus, excluding D-.

Grades would still be on a 4.0 scale, but students would have the opportunity to receive an A+ (4.33) to make up for an A-. Students would not be able to have more than a 4.0 grade point average.

“Many of the faculty feel the current grading is too course grained,” said associate physics professor Stephen Martin. “Two-thirds of my department thought it should be addressed.”

Martin said there would be fewer 4.0 GPA’s, and the exclusion of the D- grade will help students who need to maintain at least a 2.0 for various reasons.

Faculty would not be forced to switch over to the new system, but would have the choice of which they would prefer to use.

The senate also discussed what type of updates they wanted to receive from the library on their replacement of resources and an election was held for several spots on a variety of committees.